Custom Paint Color Matching in Yorba Linda

Because paint is an organic system and sunlight degrades it selectively. Red and yellow pigments fade fastest, blues and blacks hold longer, and the result is that a ten year old red coach has drifted toward orange while a silver one has gone slightly darker and flatter. The code does not know any of that happened.

Then there are factory variants. A single paint code frequently has three to eight documented variant formulas because the manufacturer used multiple paint suppliers and multiple plants over a production run. Two identical coaches off the same line can carry noticeably different formulas under the same code. Any shop mixing straight to code without checking variants is rolling dice.

RVs add a third layer. Many coaches were painted by the manufacturer using a graphics scheme sprayed over gelcoat, and the color you are matching may be a house mix from a builder that no longer exists with no code on file at all.

A spectrophotometer reads the actual surface and returns a spectral curve, which the mixing software converts into a candidate formula from the pigment library. That is the starting point, not the answer. The reading is taken from a cleaned and lightly polished area, because reading through oxidation returns the color of the oxidation rather than the paint.

From there it is sprayout cards. The candidate formula gets sprayed on a card with the same gun, same pressure, same number of coats and same clear that will go on the vehicle, because all of those change the outcome. On a metallic, gun distance alone shifts perceived color by changing how flake lies down.

The card is then compared to the vehicle in daylight, at multiple angles, from directly on and from a steep angle. Metallics are judged at angle because that is where flake orientation differences show. If it is off, the formula is tinted and a new card is sprayed. Two or three iterations is normal. That iteration is where the hours in a color match job actually go.

• Clean and lightly polish the read area before any measurement
• Spectrophotometer read at several points, not one
• Check documented factory variants against the read
• Spray cards with production gun, pressure, coat count and clear
• Compare in daylight, face on and at a steep viewing angle
• Tint and re spray until the card disappears against the vehicle

Yes, and it is different in one important way. Gelcoat is pigmented polyester resin, not a coating over a substrate. It is the surface itself. Faded gelcoat has usually lost its outer layer to oxidation, so what you are reading is a chalked surface rather than the actual color.

The first step on gelcoat is always to compound a test area back to a live surface and read that. Frequently the owner discovers the coach is not the color they thought it was, and that the whole vehicle can be brought back by compounding rather than painted at all.

Where a gelcoat repair does need color, it can be matched with pigmented gelcoat for a true repair, or refinished with a matched urethane over the repair. Which route is right depends on whether the surrounding area is going to be polished or painted, and we make that call before the repair rather than after.