Color affected by malt extract type?

Is it possible to achieve a nice light yellow color in a beer using LME? I have now brewed two batches. The first was from a kit and supposed to to be a wheat beer. It used light steeping grains and 6.6 lbs of Briess Wheat LME. The beer is good, but not a wheat. It's considerably dark in color, and very hoppy for a wheat(although the hops are beside the point). My second batch was also supposed to be a wheat(Easy Street Wheat). I got the clone recipe from BYO magazine. It called for 1.75 lbs of wheat DME and 3.3 lbs of wheat LME. Its lighter than the first beer but still has an amber color to it.

If I want a light color beer do I have to stick with only DME??

LME does tend to darken more easily than DME.

sticking to late extract addition helps minimize darkening too.

proper colors and extract twang...plus being a control freak, is what pushed me to all grain brewing.

I've made some very light colored beers using fresh (not canned) LME by adding most of it in the last 10 minutes of the boil - I am doing 4-5 lb partial mashes for most of them but have done some with all extract as well. It still is a couple of points darker than it would be with AG, but not too bad.

If it was canned, you could have received old extract as well, it does darken with time.

LME is always going to be darker than DME.

I recomend switching over and using the late addition method. I've been doing these since 1994 (before it officially became a "technique" in 2002).

Here's a few samples of my brews using DME...