|
I recently retired from an auto refinishing supply shop.
We mixed paint mostly to code, sometimes via spectrophotometer, very rarely by matching swatches.
Most paint codes would have various shades of the same code, whites were the worst, maybe 6 variants of the same code, +intense, lighter, darker, +yellow, +red were some of the variants. We used several brands, mostly Lechler and Octoral, sometimes we could get an exact match with one brand and not with another. Only one brand got a good match for my slate green Buick, in fact private import American cars were often a nightmare, sometimes we would make a custom paint by the closest match we could find and tweaking it with a few grams of various tinters until we got it right. We would record the final formula and advise the customer to buy lots enought to fix and paint damage that might occur at a later date.
All of which is a long winded way of saying if you order paint online and it isn't a perfect match don't do a Karen at the supplier, the variants can be clearly told apart in some cases at a glance, and nearly always by a close look. Using fade-out thinners helps blend in panel repairs though.
Roger.
|