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I had my car painted beautifully 6 years ago. At the time I had a few drilled holes in the boot and bonnet which my painter neglected to weld up . He promised to correct it but time passed and I have lost touch with him. I finally sent my boot and bonnet (off the car) to get the holes welded up and repaint both panels recently thinking that I could rely on the paint being a straightforward match ie 59-69 Island Blue. Turns out my car is an altogether different shade of Isalnd Blue (Nb Not the later Rover 1999 type either) as my first painter laid it on only to find that the colour was a long way off. Anyway I paid the man as he had done a respectable job and not his fault. So off I trot to one of these Top standox paint suppliers that has a photospectrometer(!) OOh. Sounds good. They take a photo of the paint on your car and analyse it to match. Well this failed miserably and with a test patch it was clear it was again way off. So the guy says he will do it manually and run a test patch. I collects my paint and he assures me this will be right. Pays him. Takes it to another painters as other one is busy. He paints it for me. Does and cracking job. Pays him. Guess what. The colour is wrong. So question is what do I do? Fed up of paying for paint and panels to have same (wrong) outcome. Do I have the paint blended using what I have left??? Any tips or advise appreciated as I think is this continues the car will be weighed in for scrap or buried in my garden..... Cheers. Mark

This is a common problem, I have had to live with badly matched panels on a few of my cars. In my experience, the early colours seem very difficult to match. Particularly Island Blue & Almond Green.

Hopefully one of our painting experts can shed a little more light on this.

I for one would certainly like to know how to do this.

The best way to sort this problem is to paint it in a clear over base , in other words the island blue would be the base coat as in a metalic paint , even though it is a solid colour . then paint the bonnet and fade over the tops of the wings , then clear laquer over the bonnet and wings . the same applys for the boot lid , fade the base coat over the rear panel and laquer. Any good painter would have done this from the start . As for the colour match , mix up the standard shade and spray several spray out cards tinting as you go . Hope this makes sense and helps

As swifty has said any serious painter would spray test panels and tint to match as close as can be achieved and always blend and overlap the adjacent panels with color then cap it with clear. It is the only way to expect positive results and is common place for any repair for new cars or restorations.
I have been doing this stuff for to many years.

swifty wrote:The best way to sort this problem is to paint it in a clear over base , in other words the island blue would be the base coat as in a metalic paint , even though it is a solid colour . then paint the bonnet and fade over the tops of the wings , then clear laquer over the bonnet and wings . the same applys for the boot lid , fade the base coat over the rear panel and laquer. Any good painter would have done this from the start . As for the colour match , mix up the standard shade and spray several spray out cards tinting as you go . Hope this makes sense and helps

I concur use this method ever day, you could possibly get the colour closer using spectrum paint chips.

Spectrum chips have a good variation of colours

Each colour blue, red, green, going off in separate directions i.e. geener, bluer, lighter, darker etc

Here in Oz, if your painter doesn't go down the same route as Scott you would go somewhere else....

Its only embarrassing when you ask to have the paint matched and he asks "to which bit"...and points out that your car already has about half a dozen different shades....

Cheers, Ian