superbad wrote:That image brings me back to another thread. If RGB 218 is the color of bright white paper, and those walls are RGB 218, why do they look like dirt and not bright white paper? If you pushed the exposure up enough to make them look white, you'd blow out everything in the scene. That's a consistent problem I've had- white walls always look gray unless you overexpose the scene.
You could go a little higher than 218 ofcourse, try it on a simple test scene and see what you get in terms of render time differences. But even in photos of interiors, you'll have to expose accordingly to get bright white walls, making windows and parts near lightsources blown out.
There is also the factor of what kind of light falls on the walls. Most often it's incandescent which gives the walls a warmer yellow tone. This is perceived as lighter color, more pleasant. Perfectly grey walls will always look strange. Just changing the color temp from perfect white to just slightly yellowish usually has a great effect, especially if combined with blue light coming from the sky. The complementary color thing

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