Spraying - getting paint to match

If it's metallic, then you've got almost no chance of a match. The actual shade that the paint dries to is affected by the drying speed, the angle to the vertical, the distance away that the spraygun is from the panel, etc.

T-cutting won't alter the colour, whether it's metallic or not. It simply smoothes the fine irregularities in the finish.

Rob Graham

You'd need to have the ability to make up the correct colour from scratch or alter an existing one. Clearly this needs a supply of different coloured 'base' paints. Halfords and others offer this service if you can give them something to match to.

Is it a metallic? If so there's more to the match than just the colour.

To a certain extent yes. And paint ages too, so the original probably won't be the same as when new.

Ideally you'd cut back the old before starting. This may bring it back to the original colour. But some colours like some reds can fade beyond redemption. And if it is a base coat plus lacquer cutting back won't change the colour of a faded base coat.

It's all a bit of a nightmare, really. ;-)

Take it to a proper bodyshop.

Sounds right.

No. However unless you get a paint chip off the car, the stuff you buy from the shop never matches. Also paint changes colour as it ages so you could get the correct paint code and it will be a few shades out on a 5 or 6 year old motor.

Can't polish a turd.

My former neighbour, who was a paint sprayer, sprayed the entire side of my father-in-law's car after I replaced accident-damaged doors - he said there's no way it would match otherwise. £100 well spent - and that was mates rates.

Actually some colours do - the Vauxhall Flame Red on my Elf does, for one. However "dries" is within minutes, so it's quickly obvious.

Spray the bit that you're spraying, and then lacquer that and a hell of a lot more, and hope it hides the join. Try and feather it in a bit, and if it's metallic, get enough on so that the flakes don't all lie flat against the panel. If you're using aerosols, that'll be bloody difficult because the paint's very thin.

It shouldn't change colour as it dries.

And you should t-cut in overspray - you can't make non matching paint match by polishing it.

You can't blend paint properly with aerosols, paint blending involves altering air pressure, distance and sequential thinning of the paint to almost neat thinners and you can't do this with an aerosol so your blending can then only be done by losing colour across panels.

Yes, all paint dries darker and this has to be taken into consideration when paint matching and spraying but there's not much you can do about this when using aerosols.

No, this should be done first to clean the adjacent panels that you would normally spray up to.

Stephen.

Indeed it is, that's why some paint jobs can't be done by DIY, after all to be totally proficient we had to serve a four year apprenticship.

Stephen.

Correct, The best way of obtaining a colour match is at the car body shop and only then if the spray painter can be bothered to colour match properly.

Stephen.

Sometimes its the only way when a colour is out, but unfortunately not many painters like to do all the extra work.

Stephen.

And as my attempts at blow ins show, requires considerably more skill than getting a decent finish across an entire panel, which I found surprisingly easy to learn. Well, except for the bonnet, because it's the bonnet, and that makes you start thinking about it, and that's when you realise that painting's a bit like shooting or golf, and you can't actually do it well at all if you start thinking about it...