When Moody Blues Met Practical Locations

I recently had to scout for a short film with a very specific 'despair and faded grandeur' vibe, heavy on cool tones and desaturated blues, think early 2000s indie cinema. What worked well was utilizing existing practical elements and supplementing with small, controllable light sources to emphasize texture over pure brightness. I found an abandoned greenhouse with peeling paint and a rusted metal frame that was perfect. To 'see' how the cool tones would play, I primarily used my iPhone 14 Pro's Cinematic mode, often setting the color temperature manually to a colder Kelvin (around 4000K) and reducing highlights in post. This let me quickly assess how the available light would interact with the chosen color palette. We'd then use a SmallRig Mini Matte Box with a 1/8 Black Pro-Mist filter on my LUMIX S1H to get a sense of halation and softness on practicals. What didn't quite hit the mark was trying to force this look into a location with too much direct, warm sunlight, even with flags and diffusion, the inherent warmth of the space fought against the desired cool palette. It just ended up looking underexposed and muddy, rather than moody. I should have trusted my gut to find naturally darker, ambient spaces instead of trying to control an environment that was fundamentally against me. How do other scouts handle translating a specific color palette brief when the location's natural light contradicts it significantly?