Painting - factory mix/store mix

Hello Is there a diffrence between factory mix and store mixed paint.

A factory color is one that is mixed in a large quanity at the plant. A custom tint is a color that is mixed [colorant added] at the store. Generally there will be a limitted selection of factory colors and an infinite selection of custum tint colors. Custom tints will be made out of various tint bases to corelate with the color wanted.

Quality wise - factory mixed are generally the cheaper paints. I don't know of any quality paint that is factory mixed.

Factory mixed paint will be a tad better quality control of the color. Paint store tinting could yield a slight color variation from store to store. Becoming more of a risk with darker colors. I know I avoid buying that last gallon of paint to finish a job from a different store. It also is common practice to box all gallons of paint you get mixed at the paint store.

If a factory has a good QC dept and the company is decent, usually the factory colors and the store colors are very close. We don't have any P&L factory mixed colors, and when using both factory mixed and what we tint at the store you can't tell a difference. However, some companies (minwax) have such a bad QC dept that even the factory mixed colors don't match each other.

Also, no matter if the color is factory mixed or store mixed it can very slightly from the chip. It also can very slightly from a different batch of the same color.

The paint store we use for the rentals only has store mixed paint (at least in the colors we use, which are pretty standard). You tell them what you want, they go mix it up.

Thanks for the replies. I bought two gal. of BM Atrium white. Years ago it was factory mixed now its store mixed. We painted it around six years ago same color. About once a year we would clean the walls with bleach and water mix. The walls were a bit yellowed but one coat it looks great.

Yeah, that's the trend - the stuff we buy used to be a factory mix.

The BM Atrium White should be no different, taking into account the paint itself has been reformulated from six years ago to comply with newer V.O.C. regs

In general factory vs. store mix could make a slight difference in difficult colors like blacks or deep reds and greens...and more so in exterior paints (not so much with interior)
That's why you'll still see more "off the shelf" exterior reds and greens at the BM store

the main reason the dark reds are factory mixed has more to do with hide then with a tint variance. The reds that the stores use are a liquid colorant that is rather thin and has little hide to add to the color; this coupled with the fact that the dark bases usually have little titanium dioxide means that the dark bright colors do not cover well. And they can have a tendency to mar. The factory blended colors use a different tint system and and slightly different paint so that they hide much better.

With whites, many stores can order the factory blended colors, but that wuold require space on the shelf. If you can mix them and get the same color then use a base and use the space for the factory blended for something else.