Find the exact shade of blue or any other color you want for your painting project with one of these seven color matching techniques.
How do you know the right color? Over time, walls all over the house accumulate dirt, holes, dents and even some places where a piece of paper tape used to protect some paintwork has ripped off a bit of paint.
Not sure where that old paint can was? Or it has, but the original paintwork is too old to be used successfully. It’s okay, you can still get the same color you had.
The same process also helps homeowners who are restoring or renovating an older home. It happens that you want to replicate a shade seen on Pinterest or a color scheme of an entire room around a single color or even a cushion color.
Whatever your situation, there are several ways to find the paint in the color you want, even if you don’t know the brand or name of the paint. Although a 100 percent match isn’t always possible, these tricks should get you as close as possible to the shade you want, so that no one notices the slight discrepancy except you.
METHOD 1: Ocular perception of your vision
If the absolute match is not critical, you can evaluate the paint options in our stores and choose one that looks the closest to the color you want to match via your ocular preception.
Now, it’s unlikely that when you try to find an existing paint color in a highly visible area, for example on your living room wall, the color will come out exactly the same.
For example, you may not need the baby blue you saw painted on an adorable crib or the exact shade of navy blue mixed with a yellow you saw via Instagram.
METHOD 2: Mobile Phone Ink Applications
There are now some mobile apps to make color matching easier. Each one works a little differently, but the essence is the same: download it to your smartphone, take a photo of the painted surface you want to find (in natural light, for best results), upload it to the app and voila!
You’ll see the colors closest to you and even view the recommended accent colors and create the perfect palette from the comfort of your own home.
METHOD 3: Using a sample of fabric or thread
Sometimes you don’t have a paint sample, but you do have a fabric sample, a thread, a favorite T-shirt or a cushion in the color you want. Just bring this “sample” into one of our stores and let our technicians use their color-matching magic to find the closest shade of paint.
Our stores have analysis methods to determine the exact combination of paint pigments needed to recreate the desired color. The technician can then match the findings to the color closest to the brand’s paint.
METHOD 4: Take a photo
Even without using a mobile app, go ahead and take a photo with your phone (again, while the object or room is illuminated with natural light) and bring the photo to one of our stores.
We can match the color very closely to your photo. Keep in mind that this is the option most likely to be a little off, due to the color variations in the screens of each phone. Still, if you have a good photo, you should get satisfactory results.
METHOD 5: Compare with a color catalog
Want to match that pastel yellow, light blue or stormy gray wall or furniture? Go to one of our stores and pick up a color chart where the samples on the paper are real paint samples. Take it home and compare and choose the one you think will look best.
METHOD 6: Meet with a Color Matcher
An object that will be much more effective than your eye is a colorimeter. A popular model is the Color PIN SE, which we sell for 99 euros in our online store.
These colorimeters can be used by anyone and within the budget of most users. These little gadgets, which work in conjunction with a cell phone app, are quick and easy to use: press the sensor against the colored item – be it that painted wall, a swatch of fabric, even the surface of something more natural like a leaf – and the sensor does the rest.
By isolating color, it blocks out all external sources of ambient light (which vary throughout the day) and uses its own consistent internal resources.
METHOD 7: Cut your own sample
When all else fails and you need a perfect match for an already painted wall, take a physical sample of the color you want and bring it to one of our stores. Using a sharp blade, remove a small painted square that is not very visible.
Take it to one of our stores, and our team will use a spectrophotometer to analyze your sample and find the closest color match. However, be aware that even then you may not get a 100% match, although you should be able to get close enough to fool any casual eye.
Once you have your new paint, remember to first correct the place where you took the sample.
