These days, the pressure is often on to minimise colour matching time but you definitely don’t want to fall into bad habits – particularly when it comes to spray-out cards.

For example, producing a ‘colour accurate’ spray-out card (particularly with metallics) means duplicating exactly what you’re going to do in the booth – same gun settings, distance from the job, application thickness, flash-off time and a suitable clearcoat.

In fact, to consistently achieve a true colour, it’s important to use un-catalysed two-pack clearcoat from a spray gun – don’t try to save a few seconds by using a substitute for clearcoat over the top of the basecoat. I’ve seen painters use things like Prepsol, wax & grease remover, lacquer clearcoat and lacquer thinner.

Although they make the surface look wet, they also rearrange the particles in the finish and give a totally false colour – generally, it’s darker and the angles and flip will also change and look milky. Taking the necessary time to complete the correct process not only impacts the quality of the end result, it also minimises wasted time spent on re-works.