From what others have said in other threads, they are good at matching their own colors to the chips...they are not so good at matching other brands colors. So if you really want the shade you want, stick with the brand where you found it. I have always gone directly to the brand manufacturer to get the exact shade.

The exception would be, like Home Depot which used to carry Martha Stewart's line...they do have the exact formulas for her colors.

We had Sherwin Williams match Home Depot's Behr colors and they did a great job.

it all depends on the skill and patience of the guy mixing the paint. My local BM guy is great, he will re-try as often as necessary, sometimes "sneaking up" on colors by tiny additions. (and of course he knows what to add to what to accomplish the goal). At the local Borg, not so much. Most of the folks who work there (there are a couple good ones) might try a second time if you complain, but mostly can't see the problem and don't know how to fix it if their formula fails.

i second what rwiegand says, except it's our local Sherwin Williams guys. their color match "eye" has been broken for weeks, and they painstakingly do it by eye. and he went back 4 or 5 times to get it perfect. after 2 or 3 i could BARELY tell a difference when he dabbed his paint onto the swatch i brought, but by the 5th time i literally could not see the paint.

if you have to color match lots of colors, i'm not sure how patient they'd be. i'm also not sure how much care they take when contractors come in with larger orders.

Why don't you take the chips you have selected into BM or SW and see if they don't have something very similar? The few times I have done this I have found an exact match without even looking that hard.

In my experience, they usually don't really match. If you went to all the trouble of analyzing those colors, you would do best to stick with the brand.

Do check your sample pots against the chips and a quart/gallon first. They don't necessarily match there either. I have found chips and samples to be quite different. Even the chips can vary depending if it is a card or a pamphlet, or if it's an old chip. Not just a little lighter or darker but undertones. Not a fluke. The whole chip and sample pot thing was very enlightening.

Having the formula does not mean it will match. The bases are different.

This post was edited by snookums2 on Tue, Feb 18, 14 at 22:01

I picked all sherwin Williams paints and can walk into lowes and tell them the name/number and they look it up. They have them cross matched and have made my paint trips quicker!! It's always been right on for me.

Jen