Image Gallery: Sea Foam Green Guitars

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Sea Foam Gree … What? Why Not?

Sea Foam green is a color that’s been plastered across the faces of countless guitars for decades upon decades now. I can only speculate without the taxing encumbrance of factual resources on my side as to when the trend for sea foam green began or what has made it a color kept around so long, as it’s a color that’s been used on guitars for a substantially longer period of time than I have been gracing this fine planet with presence, so I will spare you that kind of rubbish and keep you amused the best I can by other means. Or you can just come here and click on the pictures. We all know that’s the real reason you’re here.

Sea Foam Green Guitars

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59 Gretsch Falcon Sea Foam Green — 59 Gretsch Falcon

50's Sea Foam Green Fender Stratocaster — 50’s Fender Strat

Actual freakin Sea Foam, for the record. — Actual Sea Foam

While I can’t bust out a lofty lecture on the application of sea foam green on guitars like I’m some college professor whose sole purpose in life would have to be to bore people to death with mindless, monotone ramblings, I can offer some interesting information on the soft, cool color that holds itself in a league of its own against other colors.

Fun Facts

Sea foam green and surf green are often confused with each other to the point of being interchangeable, but they are actually different colors. Sea foam is a tad bit darker of a color. You could have a blast confusing all of your color blind friends with that gag. “No. That one’s surf green. This one’s sea foam. No that’s purple.” It’ll be a laugh.

I have never been to a beach that had sea foam that actually remotely resembled sea foam green. All the beaches I’ve been to it looked more like yellow snow sloshing up against the course terrain. I’ve seen pictures, but never with my own eyes.

The Golden Color?

This next tidbit is a goofy one so bear with me. I’m a big fan of the golden ratio. Fascinating proportion. So I did some poking around and I found this program. http://www.goldennumber.net/color.htm

To bring people that have better things to do than over analyze numbers the golden ratio is the instance when you take the full length of a line (for example). Say it’s 1 meter long. When you divide it by .618 you have two pieces. Proportionately the smaller piece is to the bigger one as the bigger piece is to the original whole. That’s the golden ratio or phi.

With that prerequisite knowledge in mind I took to this program and aimed to see just where sea foam green resided within the spectrum of color.

I moved the main tab all the way to the right and the secondary tab all the way to the left and the phi tab moved over to a light greenish hue. Since sea foam green comes from a blend of green with a dash of blue and white to lighten it up I tinkered with the lightness adjuster on the left. I didn’t do any math for this part. I just eyed it and aimed for about 60% which is close to the golden ratio. I landed on my mark and what did I see? Sea foam green.

I’m not a mathematician by any means and I implore anyone to fine tune my observations if at all inaccurate but yeah.

For a better side by side comparison of the color I’d gotten here’s a side by side comparison. You can see it’s not exactly the same, but there are a lot of variables that screw it up. Not everyone uses the same exact paint mixture and I eyed the lightness setting so… yeah. Still it’s damn close and that’s cool enough to me.

You may be asking yourself what the point of this is and to that I all I can say is numbers are cool. Do I need a reason for any of that? One of the most timeless and beloved paint finishes for a guitar is evidently right in the sweet spot of the color spectrum. Any artists out there with any thoughts on this? I’d love to either be told I’ve made a major break through or that I’m a moron beyond repair.