| When the interior of my house was painted 15 years ago, I tried | something new and kept the exact number for the paint (Mautz), so I | could get a match when buying more paint to do touch up work. | | Was told that the paint from 15 years ago has been reformulated and the | color for the specific number will not necessarily match. |
Much of it has been reformulated, but they shouldn't have trouble matching the color if the brand still exists.
It's a confusing landscape. Some types of paint are just gone. (Most notably good quality exterior oil paints and solid stains.) Some oils have been reformulated to comply. Benjamin Moore interior oil paints have been either eliminated or reduced to junk. Sherwin Williams and Pratt & Lambert still make good oil paint, but can only package it in quarts. (Any company selling oil paint in gallons has to comply with VOC regulations. As far as I know there's no such product that's worth using, aside from calcimine recoater.)
On the other hand, acrylic paints have gradually been improving. But all around there's been a lot of change, a lot of new products and a lot of discontinued products.
As far as colors go, though, that shouldn't be an issue. I still mainly use a Benjamin Moore fandeck of "classic" colors that came out, I think, in the 90s. I've been gradually switching over to Sherwin Williams paints. I can trust the color match of any color in the old BM fandeck when mixed by either BM *or* SW dealers. Most paint stores these days have formulae for most other brands of paint. But if the company that made your paint is gone and you need a computer match then it's uncertain. Computer matches only work when an experienced mixer is there to tweak them.