Why seafoam green was used in control rooms

Faber Birren, who once painted his bedroom vermilion to test his sanity, developed the color code that made light green a wall standard by 1948.

Seafoam green has always been one of my favorite colors. One of the reasons is that it has a mid-20th-century feel to it (at least for me), an era I associate with good industrial design.

Recently, designer Beth Mathews visited the Manhattan Project site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She got curious about the use of seafoam green in the control rooms, so when…