Sure, you can attempt to paint your vehicle yourself. Maybe you might get lucky and get the paint color spot on. Chances are it won’t be a perfect match. There’s a lot of factors that go into color matching and getting the perfect match.
100 Shades Of Pigment: How To Match Automobile Paint Colors
Over time, your automobile will inevitably get scratched and dinged and require painting. Although this might seem like an unnecessary or expense there are actually many benefits of performing spot repairs and painting your car. Obviously, it will look better. The benefits are more than just cosmetic, however. Painting your car will increase its value as well as prevent oxidation and rust that can cause more serious damage. Even though there are a number of do-it-yourself paint products and how-to videos on the internet, you would be well advised to take your vehicle to our body shop in West Chester Pennsylvania rather than tackling the task yourself. We have the knowledge, skills and tools to achieve a high-quality paint match.
Variables That Affect The Color
At first glance, it seems like matching the color of paint on an automobile would be fairly simple. All you have to do is look up the make, model and year in a paint database to determine the paint number—right? Wrong. There are a number of different variables that affect the actual color of the paint that is needed.
- Pigment: paint pigment comes in powder form. There are hundreds of different pigment combinations that can be used to make similar colors. There can be as many as seven different combinations of pigments for the exact same make and model of car; in order to keep the database smaller, however, auto manufacturers usually limit the color combinations they enter to just two or three.
- 2. Location: Automobile manufacturers typically have more than one plant that manufactures automobiles and more than one supplier for paint colors. The corporate office supplies a paint sample to the each and they produce a paint formula based on the sample. The paint, however, can have a color variance of plus or minus 5 percent. This means that a car manufactured in the Midwest may contain 5 percent more blue pigment while a car manufactured on the East Coast may have a slightly greener hue. Even though a database says the two cars should be the exact same color they can actually be quite different.
- 3. Application techniques: even if two cars are painted with precisely the same paint formula, the application techniques used by the manufacturer can also affect the color. Temperature, humidity, time between coats and the speed of the spray gun can all cause variations in the color.
- 4. Exposure to elements: Prolonged exposure to ultra violet rays from the sun will also cause colors to change by absorbing some of the pigment. Rust and oxidation can also cause color variations.
- 5. Type of material: paint adheres to parts made from different materials differently. For this reason plastic such as the bumper, mirrors and door handles will have a subtle variation in shade from the metal parts of a car if they are painted with the exact same formula.
As you can see, there are a lot of factors that need to be considered in order to get an accurate color match. If you simply use a number out of a paint database the area you paint will look bright, shiny and new but the rest of the car will look dull and faded.
How A Body Shop Matches Colors
With so many challenges, how does our body shop in West Chester, Pennsylvania—or any of our other 7 locations for that matter—match automobile paint colors? It is a very delicate process. First, we determine the base color. Then we use professional tinting techniques to achieve the best color for spot repairs. We tint the value before the hue and make modifications as needed. Once we have an accurate color, we will use professional blending techniques to achieve a color match. Many do-it-yourselfers make the mistake of painting an entire panel rather than blending which will ever look the same. A professional auto body shop also has the ability to create the ideal painting conditions for each type of surface. They can alter the temperature and humidity in each bay and speed up or slow down the application in order to achieve the most accurate color match possible. Hands down, bringing your car to Grand Sport Auto Body for a seamless professional paint job is the best choice. Stop in for a free quote & cup of coffee on us!
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