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

[RicodJour]

Fair enough. Your good enough is good enough for you. Not really a surprise, is it?

R

[RicodJour]

What sheen paint? Sheen differences can look like shadows or different colors when it is the reflectance that is the difference. Flat paint is the easiest to match on walls.

R

[Jim Elbrecht]

I guess I just don't repaint often enough-- or maybe too often-- but in 50 years of home-owning and doing my own painting, I don't recall a single time that I tried to paint part of a wall-- and only a handful of times that I painted less than the entire room.

Jim

[RicodJour]

I agree with you about the larger sample being better, but any paint sample can/will lie to you. Do you do two coats on the sample? Prime it first? The color and absorption of the surface to be painted has a lot to do with the outcome of the final color.

The lighting in a paint store is not the same lighting as in your house. Do you have the guy mix the paint, do a sample, take it home match the sample, then bring it back to be tweaked? If not, you're just saying, good enough is good enough and you've already made that clear.

Red's tip about rolling out the patch with a dry roller is an old trick, and an excellent one. First time I heard it was ~30 years ago from an old timer painting commercial construction. Basically the idea is to prevent any hard paint edges in the patch so any difference in color/sheen is spread out over a larger area to minimize how noticeable it is. With certain lighting conditions, and certain paint sheens, it is almost impossible to make it disappear.

R

[N8N]

We bought a very old house a couple years ago, and the PO's repainted before the sale - and they apparently were big fans of mounting stuff on the wall (e.g. mirrors etc.) and were NOT big fans of removing things like light fixtures, mirrors, switch plates, etc. when repainting. So for an example, when we had air conditioning installed and had the old round thermostat replaced with a new programmable one, there was an ugly exposed area of old paint, mounting holes, etc. left behind with a big ridge of brush marks showing the outline of the old thermostat. Likewise, they'd glued pieces of mirror on the wall in the living room to conceal the old electrical boxes for wall sconces; when I ripped those down to install new sconces I've got more ugliness. (but I still have to take the big mirror - mounted like a bathroom mirror, with clips - down over the mantel, which will cause another big mess-o-ugliness) In each case there's enough brush marks, holes, etc. that most of these areas get a skim coat of drywall mud, primer, etc.

Once I've got enough of these really egregious trouble spots done, then we'll likely go ahead and repaint whole walls or rooms, but I'm just trying to keep the house from looking like a perpetual construction site while this is going on.

nate

[RicodJour]

es

In that case just pull paint patches all over the wall and tell people it's Venetian Plaster. They'll go, "Ooooh!" and you'll wink at the wife. ;)

R

[N8N]

ches

Hah. The funny thing is I think we might just do venetian plaster in the living room :)

nate

[N8N]

It's flat. (ugh. Who uses flat paint in a kitchen?)

nate

[Frank]

e quoted text -

Good points. The phenomenon of different appearing color in different light is called metamerism (sic.) I trust the machine's eye but exact match is impossible with the metamerism problem. I recommend, and have done myself, painting the whole wall in the room that needs it, then any color mismatch with the other walls will not be as evident.

[JIMMIE]

e quoted text -

Matching off of something like a grill would be a pain. The paint guys should have told you it may not work out. Whenever I paint something that may have to be matched later I always save the info in my house info binder.

Jimmie

[DanG]

You're expecting way too much. If you had the original can of paint, it would probably not be dead on out in the middle of a wall. Any touch up painting will always require painting corner to corner, top to bottom.

[SteveB]

At last, a reasonable man.

[hrhofmann]

I saved a quart of kitchen wall satin finish paint from when we painted 8 years ago and when we had to change the mount for our cordless telephone answering system last month, I mixed a little paint with the drywall mud and filled in the appropriate areas. Then I sanded down the entire area and painted it with a 2" roller, doing it twice. I can't find the edge marks because it blended in so well. But, the paint is a very mild off-white/yellow color. I washed the whole wall before starting the patching, and even the sheen matches so closely that it is difficult where the transition is. But, it was the exact same apint.

Where I go, to the local big orange box, they smear a heavy coat of the newly mixed paint on a white paper and then dry it thoroughly with a hair dryer and check that against the sample you provide. They prefer an actual chip of the paint to be matched, from some inconspicuous point on the wall. If they are esperienced, and the color is a little off, they can add a little of one of the colorants to the original mix, put it in the shaker and try a second time. Then they have to change the formula on the paper that they print out to stick on the can.

[blueman]

Another good tip is too *wash* the entire wall. A lot of the mismatch is due more to accumulate dust/dirt/grime than to actual fading - especially indoor areas not exposed to lots of direct sunlight.

[blueman]

Here is another reason. Sometimes the paint manufacturers change the base composition.

I recently had the following experience. I went to my favorite local paint store to get another gallon of the paint that the old-timer had meticulously matched for me several years ago. At that time, he spent about an hour with me using repeated rounds of adding slight amounts of color, shaking the can, painting a swatch, drying it with a hair dryer, waiting, then seeing how it matched and continuing until the match was perfect. All for a gallon of paint.

Well, the other day when he made a new gallon using the old formula, the match was way off -- even against a test swab made from the original paint and kept in a dark area.

It turns out that Benjamin Moore changed the formulation of its bases to reduce the VOC content and that messed up all the formulas.

Luckily, my guys is skilled and he was able to save the gallon by using his magic to adjust the color by eye over several iterations.

This guy is worth his weight in gold and he doesn't seem to charge any more than the other non big box paint stores.

[gpsman]

Well, what you'd really like is unlikely.

Fascinating.

2 whole courts? You must be made of money.

New paint looks different than old paint, for reasons one who purports to be an "engineer" might deduce.

You might try investing the time to repaint all that displeases you, 2 quarts at a time, as paydays permit.

It does not seem unlikely you might seek feedback regarding trimming your fingernails.

It obviously would not, you blithering idiot.

Mmmm.. that won't work, thermostats distort color. -----

- gpsman

[SteveB]

I saved a quart of kitchen wall satin finish paint from when we painted 8 years ago and when we had to change the mount for our cordless telephone answering system last month, I mixed a little paint with the drywall mud and filled in the appropriate areas. Then I sanded down the entire area and painted it with a 2" roller, doing it twice. I can't find the edge marks because it blended in so well. But, the paint is a very mild off-white/yellow color. I washed the whole wall before starting the patching, and even the sheen matches so closely that it is difficult where the transition is. But, it was the exact same apint.

Where I go, to the local big orange box, they smear a heavy coat of the newly mixed paint on a white paper and then dry it thoroughly with a hair dryer and check that against the sample you provide. They prefer an actual chip of the paint to be matched, from some inconspicuous point on the wall. If they are esperienced, and the color is a little off, they can add a little of one of the colorants to the original mix, put it in the shaker and try a second time. Then they have to change the formula on the paper that they print out to stick on the can.

reply:

I've had good luck with the big box store, too. And if you can peel a big enough chip off to put in their computer, it will match pretty good, even if it has aged or faded. It's all up to the individual, as slight differences may not be a big deal to some people, yet others have to have it just so.

Steve

[SteveB]

"gpsman" wrote

snip

Morphed again, you slimy little worm?

Apologies to worms.

Steve

[Nate Nagel]

Follow up:

apparently I wasn't being too picky.

Somehow, miracle of miracles, I actually managed to get free from work twice in one week so I went back to the Real Paint Store and told the guy I wasn't happy with the match. He tuned it up and it's MUCH better. Haven't rolled any on the walls yet but it looks like it is a better match than I got from the Orange Colored Store. I'll be happy even if it isn't perfect, just so long as the patches aren't real obvious until such time as we can repaint. Guess I just got the b-teamer on the first attempt. And the guy did take notes on his touchup so I can get more if I need it, but I hope I won't.

So now I get to patch the ceiling in the kitchen, 'cause I can paint it. Yay! (I think yay?)

Now another paint matching question - I have another area that needs some spot repairs that's a slightly different color. In that room however the vent grilles are on the baseboards so I don't have any easily removable pieces painted the wall color that I can take to the paint store. How do I get that matched? or do I just take a whole buttload of color chips home with me and start holding them up to the wall? (my eye really isn't quite good enough to narrow it down enough that I can just grab two or three chips...) Or is there an easy way to peel a sheet of paint off of a wall?

nate

[Red Green]

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

But if the paint is textured it can toss the reader into tilt mode I hear. Any sample surface not perpendicular to the reader will be interpreted as a slightly different shade. Not saying it always will but the probability is a lot higher.