A few months ago I installed a dog door in our kitchen, and brought the approx. 1’ x 1’ piece of removed sheet rock to Home Depot to get some color matched touch up paint - they did a great job, and I went around and fixed not only the area around the door but a number of other little imperfections and dings as well.
I’d like to do the same for another room or two in the house, but won’t have any such large sample to bring in - how can I go about doing so? How small of a “chip” can their scanner get a good reading from?
As a handyman I do a LOT of paint matching at HD. Generally you need a quarter sized piece. Occasionally you can get a piece of this size from behind a switch plate cover. But I usually open a closet and cut a small piece from the backside of the front closet wall. You can usually glue this piece back on an repaint it (not that anyone will ever see it anyway.
ETA: the paint color matching apps are terrible. Don’t use them.
Sorry for the double post but it should go without saying that if you do get a color matched save the can. HD can scan the barcode next time saving you the issue or rematching in the future.
Indeed. I can’t even imagine how this would work. I mean, even if you included a color target like an X-Rite ColorChecker chart I still don’t think you would be able to get close enough. But, minus that, you have issues of: white balance, exposure, and the color calibration of different phone’s sensors. Plus I don’t even think all the possible paint colors would fit within the color gamut of a phone’s sensors. RGB does have a wider gamut than CMYK, but CMYK has some parts that are out of RGB’s gamut. Add to that that we’re not limited to CMYK here, as we’re dealing with all sorts of pigments, and I wouldn’t be surprised of certain paint colors are outside the ability of RGB to record.
Hmm…maybe, since the app is limited to paint colors by brand, maybe if you know the exact brand of paint you use, go to the paint store and get a certain color swatch, and then take a picture of the paint with the color swatch together in an evenly lit place with a single color temperature light source, then maybe you can get somewhat close. Maybe. And somewhat. But at that point, just compare the swatches yourself.
I played around with one of the apps. They do a surprisingly good job of getting close, better than I would have expected. But “close” probably doesn’t cut it for what you’re doing.
If you like a paint color in someone’s house and want to paint your walls the same, the app would do a decent job of recommending a paint color, and you won’t be able to tell the difference. But if you’re touching up parts of an existing wall and need an exact match, good luck. In that case, you could use the app to suggest something, then bring home every color swatch that is close to the suggested color and compare by eye.
One of the issues with this is that in 10 years the paint on your wall won’t be exactly the same color any more. Time, light, and living will have changed the color on the wall. If you try to patch it with the original paint color, it will be to light.
And Lucas Jackson’s advice about getting a chip from the inside of a closet, or getting it from behind an electrical cover, or an unobtrusive place behind a piece of furniture – all of those are likely to have been protected from much exposure to light. Thus a different color than the main part of the room, which will have faded over the years. Best to take your paint sample from right near where you will be doing the touch-up, since that is the color you need to match. where you got the sample is just one ore spot to touch-up.
I once had a large sample of drywall (double electrical box size) and then happened to find the original paint can, so I took both in to the paint store. They tested both, and came up with two different colors! Both in the same reddish purple color family, but about 2 tints different from each other. (I went with the lighter (drywall) one, and got a good match.)
My reading of that post was that if you match the original color (to the can codes) it will be too light as the original painting will have darkened over the years.
As someone who does a lot of painting touch up for property management companies, I find this the case quite often.
One app that I’ve seen has you hold a regular piece of white paper (that you’d use in a printer/copier) up next to the paint color you want to match. I guess it adjusts its settings based on the fact that it “knows” the paper is “pure” white and then applies those same settings to the color of the paint you want it to match.
I’ve never actually purchased paint based on this app, and agree with the method of cutting an actual sample from an unobtrusive place that has had the same amount of light exposure, roughly.
But anyway, that might be how such an app could work.