Questions About Touch Up Paint
FAQs about Questions About Touch Up Paint
Do you have touch-up paint for my car?
How much touch-up paint can I buy at a time?
What is the formulation fee and do I need to pay that on a reorder?
Can I use a Pantone color code for a touch-up application?
Unfortunately, no.
Manufacturers sometimes specify Pantone color codes as a touch up solution for their products, but Pantone colors do not work well as a proxy for a touch-up solution.
There are several reasons why. First, a Pantone code doesn't include any information about sheen. Second, Pantone color tolerances are not tight enough for touch-up applications. The Pantone Matching System was designed as an ink standard and the color swatches across color books vary too much to be used as a touch-up standard. Third, the methods often used by a manufacturer to determine which Pantone color code to use also has error which compounds the problem.
Touch up paint needs to be very precise. The smallest difference stands out like a flashing light and after seeing hundreds of examples of both production parts and the specified Pantone color code that is supposed to match, we can tell you that 99% of the time the color is pretty far off.
When we match Pantone colors we are matching to a swatch in a Pantone book - not to your product.
The only way to provide a true touch-up solution for your product is to precisely match the sheen and color of a production part or control standard. Unfortunately, there isn't an effective way to 'spec' the color well enough to produce a touch-up without a physical part.
Read more about using Pantone for touch-up.
Learn more about our paint color matching service.