I installed a new exterior prehung door on a house with stucco exterior and we are at wits end trying to match the color to touch up the caulking around the brick molding. It is a south facing wall and that catches the most brutal winter sun here in Colo so fading is significant over 20 yrs. If I could get a sample of the color, I know an old time guy who can manually match paint pretty accurately, but I hate to chip out a chunk of stucco. We tried photographing and printing the photo, but the color misses by mile. Any clever solutions out there???

 

Not sure how clever it is, and I'm not even sure if you're trying to match paint or stucco. Why not just bring home a bunch of the little color samples from a paint (or big box) store that are "close," hold them all up against the house, pick the best match, and then have a quart of it mixed up? If the person doing the mixing has experience, he/she could even customize the mix a bit to get it exact, based on what you tell them.

 

Can he come over and custom tint the paint at your house? Jobs like this are best done on site. Are you trying to just do touch up or paint that side of the house. It should be pretty easy to match it well enough to paint from corner to corner but with actual touch up, getting the color right is only part of the job - the sheen has to match too.

 

On site tinting and matching is not possible, but the idea of bringing a color fan might be a good one. Regarding sheen, this is pretty flat. This is just a small touch around the brick molding.

 

There is a difference between flats [or any sheen by a different manufacture] That is the most difficult part of custom tinting paint for touch up. Color is fairly easy to get but if the sheen is off, the touch up will show at certain angles or under certain lighting conditions. The light refraction value of 2 different brands or lines of paint are often different even if they both say flat [or satin, semi-gloss,etc]

A stock color is often used as a starting point for custom matching paint. If you can find a color chip that is close, it can then be altered to get the color dead on ...... but that's difficult to do if you aren't there to see and test the paint on the substrate.

 

I agree with everything you said. This house is probably a different color on each side due to different fade rates over 20 yrs. Fade is brutal with the UV at 5,500 ft. The sheen differs also. She once had a chip of the stucco and took it to Lowe's for a computer match. The computer apparently cannot read a surface as rough as stucco and the color match is not even in the ball park. She also has a five of stucco that is five years old, but even that color looks like it came from a different planet. This is why I want to take it to a guy my age who still does it by eye. I the end I may have to chip out a piece of stucco, but it would have to be in the open to match the fade of the rest of the wall.

I am a retired engineer, avid DIYer and handyman.

 

I've never painted in your locale but have in fla and they also have the intense sun fading issues.
I've had lots of paint matched at the paint store [not a big box paint dept] The computer matching has made things a lot easier/quicker BUT it's just a starting point. Once the computer has got the ball rolling, you still have to fine tune it [the old fashioned way] to get a near perfect match. I doubt that most paint dept employees have the expertise to do that.

How good are you at reading colors? If you put a sample on the wall would you be able to tell what needs to be added to make it match better? I can't imagine trying to match something without being there to test and see although I did work with an older painter 40+ yrs ago that could look at a wall, go back to the shop, mix up some paint and have it match the majority of the time. I've never been that good ..... or met anyone else that was.

You probably already know but most paints dry darker than they are when wet. Some change more than others and there are a few paints [cheaper brands I think] that dry lighter.

 

Colors are my strongest weakness. That is why I have someone else do it. I don't get involved with much painting at my age , but these little touch up matching things are tedious.