Quantifying Natural and Built-Cultural Color Relationships for Architectural Color Control in a Traditional Mountain Village: A Case Study of Qingmuchuan, China

Conservation-oriented renewal of traditional rural settlements increasingly requires evidence-based color control that considers both natural environmental backgrounds and built-cultural interfaces. This study examined whether built-cultural colors in a traditional mountain village are differentiated from natural environmental colors in hue composition while remaining proximate in NCS attribute space and explored how such quantitative findings can inform carrier-specific architectural color-control guidance. Taking Qingmuchuan Village in the Qinba Mountain region as a case study, 145 representative color samples were recorded, including 59 natural environmental samples and 86 built-cultural environmental samples. The samples were encoded using the Natural Color System (NCS) and their hue composition, blackness–whiteness–chroma attributes, nonparametric differences, exploratory structural order assessment, and attribute-space proximity were analyzed. Among the retained carrier-oriented samples, natural environmental samples were dominated by green-yellow hues (54.2%), whereas built-cultural environmental samples mainly contained yellow-red, red-blue, and neutral hues (31.4%, 18.6%, and 12.8%, respectively). Blackness did not differ significantly between the two systems, while whiteness and chroma differed significantly; the mean pairwise cosine similarity was 0.824, indicating attribute-space proximity rather than direct hue correspondence. Based on these empirical results, the study proposes provisional, carrier-specific guidance for facade renewal, roof and eave replacement, paving repair, and signage regulation.