"EXT" wrote in
anews.com:

RicodJour wrote:
On Nov 3, 7:57 pm, ransley wrote:
On Nov 3, 6:28 pm, Nate Nagel wrote:



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

--
replace "roosters" with "cox" to
reply.http://members.cox.net/njnagel

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.

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

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.


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 ****.