Understand Touch-Up Challenges & Importance of Original Paint

I'm Chris and Dajo, a painter here on Paint Life TV. Today I'm going to be talking about the art of touch-ups. This is something that takes some time and practice, but touching up right in the center of a wall can be difficult and frustrating. I'm going to give you some tips and tricks to make this successful for you. Recently, someone came into our Paint Life Supply Co. store and was having a lot of frustration with touching up the center of walls. Through my questioning, the client realized they didn't have the original paint. They went to Home Depot and bought a paint they didn't know the original sheen of and were just doing a color match. Now, if you ever try to match the color of a product from one company and use a different product, you're never going to get the exact color and you're never going to get the exact sheen. So your touch-ups are always going to be noticeable. The touch-ups the client was trying to do were removing photos, trying to get the house ready to sell. You'll have what we call "Halloween" around the photos, and it's kind of like dust buildup, or discoloration. The light coming in and all that, but there are these rings where the photos were. They're taking the nails out, sparring them, and trying to touch that up, and this can be extremely difficult if you don't have the original paint. Never think you're going to do touch-ups and have any kind of success if you don't have the original paint or go to a paint store and just do a computer color match. Now, what paint stores usually do, like in their home improvement stores, Home Depot, Lowe's, and things like that, is take a sample of the paint, just take a color photograph of it using a colorist's eye. They're just going to mix it right up, and it's going to be kind of close. It's never going to be exact. What you have to do is adjust it with the human eye from there. But even the best color matchers will never get an exact match. Now, even though it's inside a house, you have windows that are letting light, sunlight, the rays, into the house, so you're definitely going to have some loss of brightness over time. And you're going to have color fading. Time also plays a role, so the longer the time period, the more difficult the touch-ups are going to be. So I don't think you're going to be able to get an exact match if the paint job has been in the way for like 10 years and you're trying to do touch- ups in the middle of the wall. Another