I’m a professional decorator, and as I write this I’ve just got home, having dropped off a quote and eight (yes, eight!) colour charts for a customer. They explained at our first meeting (as I stared at a dozen squares of different shades, painted onto one wall of their living room) that they are looking for a very particular shade of green-blue.
Trying to match paint to a customer’s requirements is something we pros can help with, because we have access to several tools and services that the man in the street perhaps isn’t aware of.
In this blog, I’ll look at a few different scenarios and talk you through how we go about colour matching paint.
How to Match Paint to an Existing Wall Colour
Sometimes we need to try to find a match to a paint that’s already on the walls. Maybe one wall has been damaged, and you just want it repaired without having to repaint the whole room. Or perhaps there is a feature wall which you no longer like, and you want to have all four walls the same. This can prove to be the most problematic scenario. Even if we know the colour name and manufacturer of the paint, it may not always be a perfect match, for several reasons:
- The paint that is on the walls may have discoloured over time.
- The manufacturer may have updated their base formulation in the meantime, which can affect some colours.
- Different paint mixing machines may be calibrated slightly differently, so buying the same colour from two different shops may result in slight differences in the colour.
If we know the name of the colour, then it’s relatively easy to buy a new tin (even if the colour no longer appears on the latest colour chart, the formulation will still be stored on the system). But trying to just touch in a small area on a wall is unlikely to be successful, for the reasons mentioned above. In this situation, I would always recommend painting the whole wall, stopping neatly in the corners.
But what if we don’t know the name of the paint that’s on the walls? Well, it’s not going to be easy, but we have a few tools at our disposal:
Colour charts
Because most people choose colours from colour charts in the first place, this is a good place to start. But with so many paint manufacturers now operating in the UK, there are a lot to choose from! And as mentioned above, colours come and go with fashions, so manufacturers regularly remove some colours from their charts and add new ones instead.
Fan decks
Think of these as like colour charts but with thousands of colours instead of a few dozen. The more options you have, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to find a close match. Unlike colour charts, fan decks don’t come for free, and owning one for every manufacturer gets expensive.
Hand-held colour sensing tools.
These little gadgets – like the Dulux Colour Sensor – can be held up against any solid object (like a wall, for example) and will then suggest the nearest colours made by that manufacturer.
So, for example, the Dulux one (which works with an app on your mobile) will scan your wall and tell you the two or three closest Dulux colours to the wall. Which is great, and it’s a very clever piece of kit, but what if the wall wasn’t painted with Dulux? Well, in most cases, you will have at least one option from the gadget – sometimes two or even three – which are very close. Click here to see online prices.
You can then order a sample pot and see just how close the paint colour is, and whether it’s acceptable.
In-store scanning
If you can manage to peel or scrape a big enough chip of paint from the wall (the size of a 50p piece is ideal), take it to your local Dulux Decorator Centre, and they will use their in-store scanner to match it. Not just the nearest Dulux colour; your colour, matched. I thought I’d test it out, and took my business card to my local DDC, where they scanned it. I now have a sample pot of Dulux Vinyl Matt in the exact shade of blue on my card – no idea what I’m going to do with it, but it was fun to try it out!
Colour Matching One Brand’s Colour to Another Brand’s Paint
What happens if you fall in love with a particular shade from a designer brand…until you find out the cost? No problem. Most of the big “mainstream” paint brands have seen the opportunity here and have proactively matched a lot of their competitors’ colours and set them up on their systems already.
So, for example if you want “Pomegranate Pink” from XYZ designer brand on your bedroom walls, you can walk into your local Dulux Decorator Centre and they will probably have it on their system already, so it’s as easy for them to mix that for you as it is for them to mix any of their own colours.
It isn’t a “perfect match”, because different manufacturers use different pigments when colouring their paint, but it’s as close as they can get it; most of the time, it’s very close indeed.
If in doubt, get a sample pot first. And anyway, once it’s on the walls, nobody remembers if there’s a tiny difference. I use this approach a lot, because not only can it save my customers money, but it also means I can use base formulations that I like working with. Here’s a Dining Room I painted, not using XYZ designer brand, but a colour match:
Colour Matching Paint to Non-Paint Surfaces
What happens if what you want to match isn’t paint? Maybe you want the bedroom walls to match their duvet cover. Maybe you want paint to match the colour of the wallpaper. No problem, you can use any of the suggestions mentioned above – try standard colour charts first, if there isn’t a good match move onto a fan deck where there is far greater choice.
Or use a hand-held scanner like the Dulux Colour Sensor, or take a sample into your local Dulux Decorator Centre and ask them to scan it there for you.
What to do once you have matched your colour
I always recommend to my customers to buy a sample pot first. Possibly two or three sample pots if there are a couple of options which all look close. I’ve just ordered three samples myself this afternoon for an upcoming job. They’re not expensive in the great scheme of things, and it’s better to spend a few pounds double-checking, than buying a 5L tin of something that isn’t right.
Rather than giving the sample pot to the customer though, I paint squares of lining paper with their chosen colours and give them those (see swatches of dark green shades I prepared for a customer earlier this year). The lining paper samples can be moved from one part of the room to another, where the light may be different, without the need for dozens of splodges of paint all over the walls.
Final Thoughts
Now, there is no need to be settling for “close, but no cigar” when it comes to colour matching paint. The tools and services are out there for us to use, and paint manufacturers like Dulux want us to make use of them, so we buy their paint.
Whether you’re trying to match a sample of the existing paint, a cushion cover, or a competitor brand’s colour into your favourite vinyl matt base, it’s no longer rocket science. And the team at your local Dulux Decorator Centre have the tools to help you achieve the closest possible match, so why not get them to do the work for you?
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