Matching a Paint Colour

emploee_77

Hi All,

Can anyone recommend how I locate the colour of paint used on my wall? There's a large mark which I'd rather correct than repaint the entire room.

juliedee4663

Even if you still had the original paint you would struggle to correct part of the wall without it being obvious. The only way to get a good finish would be to paint the whole wall in my opinion.

ThisIsWeird

If you have a good eye, you might be able to take a close-up photo of the wall, and take this to a pro decorating shop. Many will have sizeable swatches with incremental shade changes that they could lend you, and you might just be able to narrow down a close match this way. 
But, I doubt it'll be perfect.
Chances are it was an off-the-shelf colour, but I don't know if they'll be able to suggest what it could be once you point out the closest watch card - "Oh, that looks just like Dulux Forum Grey". 
Even then, batch changes will almost certainly mean a less-than-perfect match.

FreeBear

ThisIsWeird said:

If you have a good eye, you might be able to take a close-up photo of the wall, and take this to a pro decorating shop. Many will have sizeable swatches with incremental shade changes that they could lend you, and you might just be able to narrow down a close match this way. 
But, I doubt it'll be perfect.

Mobile phones and cameras are pretty poor at giving accurate colour rendering. Even if you have been through the exercise of colour balancing, the ambient light will throw off any attempt to get a "good" photo.

Once paint has been on a wall for any length of time, it will change due to sunlight and airborne pollutants. So whilst you might be able to pinpoint a specific paint mix, it will be a shade or two different once slapped over the top of the old paint.

using colour swatches will get you close, but do use a variety of light sources (daylight, warm white, cool white, etc) when doing the comparisons.

ThisIsWeird

FreeBear said:

ThisIsWeird said:

If you have a good eye, you might be able to take a close-up photo of the wall, and take this to a pro decorating shop. Many will have sizeable swatches with incremental shade changes that they could lend you, and you might just be able to narrow down a close match this way. 
But, I doubt it'll be perfect.

Mobile phones and cameras are pretty poor at giving accurate colour rendering. Even if you have been through the exercise of colour balancing, the ambient light will throw off any attempt to get a "good" photo.

Once paint has been on a wall for any length of time, it will change due to sunlight and airborne pollutants. So whilst you might be able to pinpoint a specific paint mix, it will be a shade or two different once slapped over the top of the old paint.

using colour swatches will get you close, but do use a variety of light sources (daylight, warm white, cool white, etc) when doing the comparisons.

Absolutely. And the photo would just be to try and get the fellow at the counter into the right ballpark, and they might be able to lend out a couple of swatches to try.
I suggested it as I took mil to a (Johnson's?) decorator centre when she tried to get more of a light colour she'd forgotten the name of - she had a Dulux colour card and told him, "it's a bit like this, but not quite...", and he handed her a large swatch with fractional variations that 'included' the Dulux colour.
That blew her mind, so she just went completely new, but I was surprised at the size of the swatch, with each shade being only fractionally different.
Of course, 'off-whites' aren't just 'dark whites', but go off in different tint directions too - greys, creams, fawns, whatevs - so the chance of the OP finding the current shade and tint like this is infinitesimally remote, certainly as a touch-up match. But, possibly close enough to match the remaining walls if only one is repainted?