Brown, but lighter. With a hint of rust.

Brown, but lighter. With a hint of rust. Matt, but with a sense of depth.

That was the whole brief. The price was agreed, the dates were agreed, the job was booked. Everything was settled except the one thing the client would look at every day for years.

If you've ever worked to someone else's taste, you know what comes next. You mix a sample. He looks at it and says "not quite". You go darker. Too dark. Lighter, but warmer. Warmer, but not that warm. Every "not quite" costs a trip, a tin and an afternoon nobody pays for.

The time isn't the worst part, though. Whatever finally goes on the wall, the words are still his. "A hint of rust" means whatever he needs it to mean on the day he decides he doesn't like the result. You can't prove what an adjective meant. Nobody can.

You can't prove what an adjective meant. Nobody can.

And it isn't a painting problem. It's the same conversation about the kitchen that should be "warm white, but not yellow", the logo that should feel "trustworthy, but modern", the tiles that should be "grey, but not a cold grey". A client describing what he wants isn't giving you information. He's opening a negotiation with no end, because he can always say it wasn't what he meant.

So I stopped trying to understand the description and asked him one question: "Can you find me a picture of it? Anywhere. A car, a sofa, a door you saw on holiday, a photo on the internet. Just show me the colour you see in your head."

He found one and clicked on the colour. That gave us a code, six characters, the same code a screen uses to display it. The code went to the paint supplier, and the supplier matched it to the nearest shade in their range.

I won't pretend the wall came out identical to the photo. A screen glows and a wall doesn't. Light, finish and texture all shift a colour a little, and any painter will tell you the same. That was never the point.

The point was who had chosen. Before the click, the colour was mine to get right and his to reject. After the click, it was his. He picked it, from a picture he found himself. When it went on the wall, nobody was arguing about whether I'd understood "a hint of rust". There was nothing left to argue about. He was looking at his own decision.

The colour the client ties himself to comes out of your headaches.

The rule works far beyond paint. The same goes for anything that lives in taste rather than in numbers. Don't interpret and don't guess. Make him point. You can argue with a description forever, but not with a choice he made himself.