How car paint colour matching works
Car paint colour matching starts with your car's paint code, but the code is a starting point, not a guarantee. The painter mixes the colour to the code, sprays test cards, compares them with your car in good light and adjusts the mix until it matches, then blends the new paint into the panels either side so there's no visible edge. If it's done properly, you shouldn't be able to see where the repair starts.
A panel that's a shade out is obvious every time you walk up to the car, so it's a fair thing to ask about before you book any paintwork. What follows is how we go about it at Newbridge Accident Repair Centre, and any decent bodyshop works in much the same way.
Where is my car's paint code?
Most cars carry the code on a sticker or small metal plate. Each maker puts it somewhere different and labels it differently, but the usual places are:
- the door shut, often on the pillar between the front and rear doors
- under the bonnet, on the slam panel or a strut top
- in the boot, under the floor covering or around the spare wheel well
- in the service book or the original sales paperwork
The code is usually a short mix of letters and numbers. Your V5C logbook won't help, because it only gives a general colour like "blue" or "grey". A main dealer can normally look the code up from your VIN, and we can find it when we inspect the car, so don't worry if you can't track it down.
Why doesn't the paint code give an exact match?
Because one code can cover several slightly different shades. A colour may be made at more than one factory, or tweaked over the years a model is built, so paint suppliers publish variant formulas for the same code. Picking the right variant is the first step.
Then there's what's happened to your car since. Sunlight fades paint, reds in particular, and a car that lives on the street will usually have faded more than one kept in a garage.
On some cars the panels weren't identical in the first place. Plastic bumpers and mirror covers are often painted separately from the metal body at the factory, so a slight difference between a bumper and the wing beside it can be original.
Test cards: matching the car as it is today
The aim is to match your car as it looks now. Once the colour is mixed to the code, the painter sprays it onto a test card, often called a spray-out card, and holds it against the car. It gets checked in daylight and under the workshop lights, face on and from an angle. If it's slightly off, tinters are added to the mix and another card is sprayed, until the card disappears against the panel.
Some bodyshops also use a handheld device that reads the colour of the panel and suggests a formula. It can speed things up, but the final check is still a painter's eye against the car.
What is blending, and why paint a panel that isn't damaged?
Even a near-perfect mix can show a faint line where new paint meets old along a panel edge. Blending gets round that. The painter applies full colour over the repaired area, then fades it out across part of the neighbouring panel, so your eye moves from old paint to new without spotting a step. Clear lacquer then goes over everything that's been painted.
So if your front door is damaged, the estimate may include blending into the front wing and the rear door. People sometimes see that and assume the bill is being padded. It isn't. Those panels are there so the repaired door doesn't stand out against them.
Is metallic or pearl paint harder to match?
Yes. Metallic paint contains fine aluminium flakes, and the way those flakes settle depends on how the paint goes on: the spray gun setup, the distance from the panel, how wet each coat is. If the flakes lie differently from the factory paint, the panel can look right head on and wrong from an angle, or lighter in the sun and darker in the shade. Painters call that change with viewing angle the flop.
Pearl paints are harder again. Many pearl whites are three-stage finishes: a base colour, a translucent pearl coat, then lacquer. The number of pearl coats changes the final shade, so it can take several test cards with different numbers of coats to get it right.
Solid colours are the easiest, although a faded solid red or white can still take a few attempts.
Why can a repair look different in different light?
Two paints can match under one kind of light and not under another. It's called metamerism, and it happens because the pigments in a refinish mix aren't always the same ones the factory used, even when the colour looks identical. Daylight is the fairest test.
That's why it pays to look at the car outside, in daylight, when you collect it. Walk round it, look along the sides from the front and back, and if anything looks off, tell us there and then while the car is still with us.
Car paint colour matching at Newbridge
All three of our sites do paint repairs and colour matching. Our car paint repairs page covers scratch repairs, panel painting and blending. Smaller scuffs and chips come under minor car repairs, and smart repair uses the same colour matching on a smaller patch. If the paint damage came from a collision, start with our accident repairs page.
For a price, send us photos, plus the paint code if you've found it. If you'd rather talk it over, phone the site nearest to you:
- Basildon, Essex: 01268 590 722
- Dartford, Kent: 01322 930 719
- Sydenham, South London: 020 8659 2221
You can read what customers say on Google about the Basildon site, the Dartford site and the Sydenham site.
Questions
01Can you match paint that has faded?
Yes. The colour is mixed to the code and then adjusted, using test cards against your car, until it matches the paint as it looks now rather than as it looked new. Heavily faded or chalky paint is harder, and sometimes the better advice is to machine polish the neighbouring panels as well, so the old paint and the new sit closer together.
02Will a touch-up pen from the dealer match my car?
For a small stone chip, it'll usually be close enough to stop rust and look fine from a few feet away. On a scratch it tends to show, because touch-up paint is dabbed on rather than sprayed, so it can't be blended and the surface is never quite flat. It also makes no allowance for fading, so on an older car the shade can be off.
03Why does my bumper look a different shade from the wing next to it?
It may have left the factory like that. Plastic bumpers are often painted separately from the metal body, sometimes with a slightly different paint system, so small differences can be original. A clear difference on one panel only can also point to an earlier repair. Look along the car in daylight and compare that panel with the same panel on the other side.
04Can metallic paint be repaired without respraying the whole car?
Yes. Metallic paint is repaired panel by panel, the same as a solid colour, with blending into the panels either side so the flake and the shade carry across. It takes more care and often more test cards, but a full respray isn't normally needed for scratch or accident damage. We'll tell you which panels need painting before any work starts.
05Is the paint code the same as the colour name?
No. The colour name is the maker's marketing name, while the paint code identifies the actual formula. Two cars sold under the same colour name can have different codes, for example across model years, which is why we work from the code on the car itself and the car's own paint, not the name in the brochure or on the logbook.