How many times has this happened to you? After spending hours agonizing over the perfect shade of paint, yougleefully start painting every wall in your home in that shade. Then, years later, when there’s a swath on your bedroom wall that needs retouching, you can’t remember if the color was Phantom Mist or Dinner Mint. Panic sets in. You frantically Google, “how to match paint color already on a wall?” Is it even possible to color match paint?
So, what’s a forgetful homeowner to do? You can’t exactly carry a wall to the hardware store.
As it turns out, finding a color match is harder than it sounds. You can’t just pick up whatever color sample looks closest and start painting your wall. (Having just one small section of a slightly greener shade of blue would look so tacky!)
In desperation, you might try mixing two close(ish) colors together to create the right shade—but then you’d end up with both the wrong color paint, and probably a mess!
Not to worry, here’s everything you need to know about how to match paint color already on a wall.
Grab a spool of thread
A digital snapshot from your cellphone cannever quite capture the exact shade (and you don’t want to end up buying anugly colorby mistake just because of the way the wall looks on your phone).
Instead, an ingeniousway to findthe true depth of a toneis to match the paint color to a spool of thread.
“Maybe you have the various spoolsin your house,” says Sandy Levin, home staging expertand ownerof Beautiful Interiors Design Group in Freehold, NJ.
If youdon’t routinely sew, buyseveral different shadesthat seem close at your neighborhood crafts store.
Once you have a range of spools, place them against your paint color and see which is the best match. Then, bring that spool to the paint store and ask the staff to match the color.
Or a swatch of fabric
Another way to color match paint without a paint chip is to find the shade you need on a piece of fabric in your house.
“Maybe the color is one of several in a print pillow, or maybe the color matchesa piece of clothing in your closet,” says Levin. Take the fabric to the hardware store and let a staff member color match the fabric to a paint color.
How to match paint color: There’s an app for that (naturally)
If you can’t find a color of material or thread that matches your paint quite right, you can usually depend on an app.
Almost everymajor brand of paint has a free app to help you nail a shade you’ve forgotten the name of. It usually works like this: Take a picture ofyourexisting color and upload it for analysis. The app will identifythe hue andfind the closest shadein the manufacturer’s palette.
A few popular color matching apps for your smartphone are Behr ColorSmart, Benjamin Moore Color Capture, and ColorSnap Visualizer from Sherwin-Williams.
Just remember that each app provides matching paint colors for its specific brand only—so here’s to hoping you remember what brand you used to paint your bathroom walls. If not, proceed to our next step.
How to match paint color already on a wall: Just scrape some paint off
Let’s say that you’re out of ideas. You can’t find anything else in your house that matches that specific shade of green on your bedroom walls, and nothing is quite like the off-white you put in the kitchen.
You’ve been to the craft store to look at all the shades of thread, and nothing seems right. You’ve even tried out the apps and still can’t match that color.
“An easy way to match your existing paint color is to simply take a knife and peel off the top layer of paint,” says Scott Specker, owner ofFive Star Painting inSuwanee and Alpharetta, GA.
Don’t worry, there’s no need to dig a deep gash into your otherwise pristine drywall or to remove a large section. Scraping a super thin, 1-inch-square sample will do the trick. It’s like creating your own paint splotch!
“If you take that piece into any local home improvement store, they should have computerized color-matching technology that can assess your paint and tell you its exact color,” he adds.
Finally, when all else fails, consider consulting with a colorist. The pros have all the tricks for matching paint colors.
