Paint matching (am I expecting too much...?)

[Nate Nagel]

A while back I had to demo a kitchen cabinet to allow a new fridge to be moved in... I was in a time crunch and didn't have time to go to a real paint store that day so I went to That Orange-Colored Store and had them mix me a quart of paint. I took with me a vent grille that had been painted over to color match. The guy tried, and even wasted a quart on his first try when it came out too dark (color is a flat white tinted slightly blue) second try looked good in the store but when I painted the wall it ended up slightly more brownish-grey than the rest of the wall. (I also used almost the whole quart just to cover the area that was behind one large kitchen cabinet...)

Unfortunately this @#$@#$% color is on about half the walls in my house, and I have a couple other little areas that I'd like to address (changing light fixtures in living room and removing mirror over mantel; repainting ceiling at top of stair landing where it was badly prepped; painting kitchen ceiling where I demo'd an ugly fluorescent fixture and never patched/painted the ceiling) but we're not quite ready to repaint any whole rooms yet. So I would really like to have a couple more quarts of paint matched to the existing so I can keep doing spot repairs as I get motivated and not have the house look all ghetto and have primer spots all over the darn place until whatever room gets a full repaint.

Today I had a dentist's appt. in the AM so I left early and hit the closest "real" paint store and brought the same vent grille with me. They "matched" it while I was visiting with Dr. Hook and I picked up two quarts (they used Benjamin Moore base.) I just opened one and spread a little paint on the corner of said vent, it looks like a pure white in comparison. Not even anywhere near as close as the paint I got from HD.

The few areas I've used the HD paint don't look awful, but it's obvious that there's a paint mismatch. Is that about the best I can hope for (in which case I should go back to HD and get a couple more quarts of the same thing I got last time,) or should I take everything back to the real paint store and let them try again? I realize you can't see what I'm working with so you can't really say "that's about as good as it gets, you're being too picky, just deal until you repaint" or "you can do better than that, you've just had bad luck with paint guys" (but I guess that's kind of the feedback I really need)

Not sure if posting pics would help, but if it would, I can take a pic of the last little spot I did, around the thermostat on the kitchen wall...

nate

[SteveB]

Paint is a bitch. Even if you do save those things they put on the top of paint cans stating exactly how many parts of which color they put in it, you can have another gallon made down the road, and it comes out looking different.

This can be for several reasons:

The substrate. Putting it on different things. Different brands of drywall. Kilz or no Kilz? Primer or no primer? Which primer? How long has it been there, and how much UV rays from the sun has lightened it? If it is in a kitchen or bath area, how much oil or steam has changed the color? Paint looks different after it has soaked into a wall for five years than that which is a week old.

I have kept those little color things, and gone back later and gotten EXACTLY the same mix, and painted it on, and it looks different than the paint on there. Even clothes fade. Car paint jobs fade.

NEVER EVER EVER EVER LOOK AT PAINT UNTIL IT HAS DRIED A WEEK. It takes that long to get even close to the color it's going to be.

It's not so much a mismatch, as you can get exactly the same paint mixed and it won't match, it has to do with fading and lots of other factors.

Solutions: Do areas where the mismatching won't be obvious. Repaint the whole thing from the get go. Change the color scheme so it don't matter. If you are doing remodeling, prime properly, or Kilz, and then, it may take two or three coats to get it exactly right. Lower expectations - what you think is an obvious mismatch won't be noticed by others.

And lastly, consider the ambient light. Lots of paints and colors look different when viewed at 9 AM versus 2 PM. On a sunny day, or a cloudy day.

HTH, just some things to ponder.

Steve, who knows paint will drive you batty, but only if you let it.

[ransley]

Colors can be matched and are every day, you have to demand it and have it dried out as a large sample like 4x4", not the drop of paint they usualy try to get away with.

[RicodJour]

Define matched. If good enough is good enough, then yeah, matching is no big deal. If you have a paint and try to match if to a color chip, computer match it from a sample, use the exact same formula from the exact same store using the exact same equipment, you're likely to get three different colors and it's anyone's guess which one will be the closest.

The whole trick to matching paint is knowing where to hide the transition and how to hide the transition. With some paints it is essentially impossible.

To the OP, unless you're made out of money, and have a thing for the paint store clerk, you may want to try tweaking the paint yourself with some universal colorant. If you're not good with colors, this too can be almost impossible.

R

[EXT]

I have done color matching in my past. It requires a good eye and good judgement on what colour is in the original so that it can be put in the new paint. Too much credit is given to computer color matching. To do it you have to use expensive equipment that needs calibrating on a regular basis. The equipment used in the BORG is cheap and most likely NEVER calibrated once it is installed. Sometimes it will work, sometimes not, usually only a close match.

[benick]

Matching colors "EXACTLY" is impossible....All the painters I know that buy a few gallons of color tinted paint , dump the 1 gallon cans into a clean 5 gallon bucket and mix them to eliminate any possibility of differences between the 1 gallon cans...Even paint mixed at the exact same place and time will have "slight " differences , let alone trying to match old paint which is nearly impossible...Close is as good as it gets with trying to touch up old paint with new paint...It will ALWAYS be noticable......HTH...

[Red Green]

"SteveB" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Like to add, when touching up even from an original can, blend/fog by running the brush/roller virtually dry way past the area being done. Differences are harder to notice.

[Red Green]

"EXT" wrote in news:4af0e52c$0$65835$ [e-mail]:

I've had the same chip scanned multiple times, one right after another, and it came up with a different formula. I'm not talking about colorant X of 5.5 vs 5.6. I mean different colorant combos.

If you're not going to mix all your paint together before starting at least when one gallon is half empty add a half gallon from a new can and continue. And always shake the can before using. Lately even when I open cans that were mixed a couple of hours ago you can see separation of colorants. Must be more new and improved shit.

[hrhofmann]

If the newer paint is not "colored" enough, why not mix it with some of the "orange store" paint that was too colored, maybe you'll get closer.

[RicodJour]

That's called boxing. Why pouring one can into another can/bucket makes it a box, I'll never know.

R

[ransley]

us

A match is a match, ive painted for 30 years and have good eyes and dont spend any money on paint matching, I just use my eyes.

[N8N]

I've run out of the other paint, plus the tint of that is off, it is muddier than the color on the walls

to whoever mentioned it, yes, I managed to figure out that a dry roller is the ticket. In fact, for small patches I've been wiping the paint on the wall with a brush and then rolling over it with a dry foam roller to knock the texture down.

nate

[dadiOH]

IME and IMO this is the best solution for the OP assuming that the new paint color is pretty close. One can also feather out by diluting the paint.

[norminn]

I have used paint from the original mix to touch up and even that did not match the older paint coat ... more or less gloss. If one mix is pretty close, you might paint one entire wall with it...the contrast might be less noticeable at a corner.

[ransley]

A large sample has to be dried out on at least a 4" piece of paper, you cant tell anything looking in a can and should not accept that nor should you accept the trick of the employee drying out a 1/4" spot on paper, after its dried look at it a bit, even under different lighting.

[Joe]

I just scanned over the OP's post, but if it's an option, paint the whole wall. The color difference will be less noticeable where painted wall meets unpainted wall due to light hitting each differently and you'll still avoid repainting the whole room. I'll also second the opinion of dry roller feathering.

[norminn]

I would guess, from experience, that matching two separate mixtures for color is almost impossible, even with a good deal of experience with color formulas. That said, I bought paint for exterior trim on my daughter's house and had not bought enough. When I returned to purchase more paint, the store clerk (color master supreme) mixed a new batch, took samples of each and dried them with a hair dryer. Not my request ... just his attention to detail. He nudged the color a bit, took another sample, dried it, done. I was satisfied with the color before he was :o)

[Percival P. Cassidy]

But paint doesn't always look the same color when it's dried out on the wall (or whatever) as it does when it's liquid in the can.

Perce

[N8N]

It's not at all, that's the problem. I've had three different batches of paint mixed and only one was close enough to even try putting it on the wall, and it is clearly different - patches look like shadows.

nate

[N8N]

It's not an option *yet* as most walls to which I'm doing this still have areas that need to be addressed. I'd like to be able to take a couple days and attack the whole mess but I'm picking away at this for a couple hours each evening etc. and am just trying to find a stopgap so whatever I'm working on doesn't look too objectionable.

nate