Computer house painting software is great to help one visualize what a paint color will look like on the house exterior or on an interior room.
The problem with computer generated colors is that they don't look the same once printed out - regardless of the quality of your printer.
In order to understand how to get the computer generated color to a functioning sample, a little introduction to the difference in color from a computer vs a paint sample is needed.
Computers = Additive color system
Colors on a computer screen are made by mixing light together to form the various colors seen on the screen. The additive color system uses red, green and blue light in differing amounts to produce colors. This is know as the RGB system. Depth of color is controlled by the intensity of the light. Low intensity will give you darker colors (black being the least intensive) and high intensity will give you bright colors (white being the most intense). The additive color system starts with no light (black) and adds (colored: red, blue, green) light to produce colors.
Computer screen color is additive color. Printed color (inks and dyes are like pigments) is subtractive. Because of this the beautiful color you seen on the computer screen, when printed, does not look the same. You have translated a projected light color and printed it on to a paper, converting additive color to subtractive color - and much like translating French to English, often something gets lost in the translation.
Duplicating a color on your own computer
Additive color formulas as found on computer house paint visualizers are defined by either hexadecimal color code or RGB decimal code. Hexadecimal code is written in 3 groups of two letters or combinations of letters and numbers for red, green and blue. The decimal code is written in a number from 0 - 256 for each of the three colors (red, green and blue). There are conversion calculators to help you convert from one to the other. If you can get the color code, you can duplicate it on your own computer using a simple program like Microsoft’s “Paint” or something similar.
Going from computer screen color to actual paint sample
In order to make the color you’ve finally arrived at on your computer via a house paint vizulizer or virtual house painting software, you need to translate the RGB additive color to subtractive color. To do this, you must be the interpreter. The most practical way to do this is by bringing subtractive color samples (paint color card strips) to the computer screen and visually color match them together by eye.
You will need lots of color strips. I recommend using a full color deck if you can get one, or a number of color strips in the general color family that you are trying to match. To do this, simply hold the color strip up to the computer screen, one at a time, comparing the strip colors to the computer generated color until you get a visual color match. When you find a match, you have translated the additive color over to subtractive color, ready to be duplicated at your local paint store.
Paint = Subtractive color system
Paint color is produced by pigments which absorb parts of the light wavelength (hence the term subtractive) from the light source (sun, incandescent lamp) to leave the surface with a perceived (or actual - if you prefer) color. The subtractive color system starts with light (full light with complete wavelength), then subtracts parts of the light wavelength by using pigments to absorb parts of that light wavelength which leaves the painted object with a color.
Q. How do you match one paint manufacturers color strip into another paint manufacturer's actual paint?
A. Bring the color strip to the paint store and have them do a manual or optical color match to the color strip.
How to Match Paint to an Online Paint Color Visualizer
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