![]() ![]() To prepare my test walls, I primed the 2-foot square pieces of brand-new drywall with Valspar's untinted drywall primer. However, they reported the same color readings down the line from flat to high-gloss. To test how high-gloss, matte or other variations in paint sheen affect results, I also measured different sheens across the colors I choose, as well as a sheen swatch. The sheen of a paint can affect the way your eyes see color, but color sensors are designed to see through it to the pigment beneath. You might be wondering about the impact of sheen on the above results. There are definitely more than 50 shades out there, and the "greige" trend just complicates matters more. Grays are incredibly popular in interior design right now, and can appear cool or warm and everywhere in between. Too deep and it appears almost purple, too light and it takes a turn toward orange, yet most people have an idea of what true red looks like. Red came to mind because it's such a classic color that's tricky to get just right on a wall. Pico reports the RGB values and matching branded paint colors.įor the second board, I wanted a bold and visual primary color. It then shares those results via Bluetooth in your phone's Pico app. Costing $49 (AU$65, roughly £35 converted), this paint-matching device sequentially bursts red, green and blue light onto the surface you scan. Palette PicoĪustralian company Palette released Palette Pico in 2018. Before we get into results, here's a quick rundown of each of the units I tested. If there aren't any perfect match results, you can take the RGB values of the surface to paint stores like Sherwin-Williams, where they'll mix the color from a Sherwin-Williams base or tint a similar color to get it just right. Pico uses similar categories with "Great Match" and "Good Match." Colors in the excellent, great and three-star match categories are so close (or even the same just a different brand) that you'd probably never notice a difference. Nix uses the categories "Excellent Match," "Great Match" or "Good Match." Color Muse uses a three-star rating to indicate matches less than 1 Delta E, a two-star rating for 1-4 Delta E and one-star for anything outside that. Medium difference, also obvious to an untrained eye Very small difference, only obvious to a trained eye A smaller number is better 2 Delta E is commonly thought of as the highest the difference can be before a sharp-eyed person will notice, or the "just noticeable difference." Here's a table of the most common ranges: The difference between a color as represented by its values in a color space and that color as displayed in the real world is referred to by color scientists as Delta E. Since color sensors have varying levels of accuracy and the color reading translates the color of the paint on the wall to the not-directly-correlated RGB color scale, that's two ways errors creep in. The software assigns the closest color it can find. Paint (like all real-world colors) is reflective, not additive, so its colors don't exactly map to RGB. RGB is an additive system, however - like you learned as a toddler, red plus blue makes purple. For instance, pure yellow is composed of equal values of red and green, and adding increasing amounts of blue makes it increasingly lighter. RGB is a way of generating colors as defined by mixes of the three primaries 0,0,0 denotes black, and in an 8-bit system 255,255,255 denotes white. Watch this: Pinpoint your paint colors with these connected sensors Because branded apps such as Sherwin-Williams and the apps for these sensors use RGB (red, green, blue) primaries to define the colors for matching, that's what I went with in this comparison. It then translates those into digital values we're more familiar with. ![]() You press the sensor against the wall to block out light, then the sensor uses its own light source to read the color wavelengths of the reflected light. Each is a little different in hardware and app design, but they work in a similar way. I tested three color sensors: the Nix Mini, Color Muse and Palette Pico. The aim is to match the color to what shade the wall is now. Chances are it won't be the original color, and that's OK. That's where a color matcher supposedly shines. Good for you! Bad news is, if you touch up your wall with a fresh can of paint, it won't look the same. Let's say you remember exactly what brand, color and sheen you purchased back in 2013. That perfect shade of blue you painted the living room five years ago is likely a few shades lighter today than when it was fresh. Especially in rooms with a lot of natural light, paint pigments fade over time. Paint doesn't stay the same color forever. ![]()
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