# Custom Color Matching: Cost, Hours and Process in Hacienda Heights Custom color matching identifies and mixes the color that is on your coach right now rather than the color that left the factory. It combines a spectrophotometer reading, a variant deck comparison, spray out cards and a let down panel, because paint on a twelve year old coach has drifted from its own code. ## Specifications - Price band: $500 to $5,000 - Shop hours: 4 to 22 hours - Turnaround tier: Light cosmetic - Insurance billable: yes - Parts lead time: Same day mixing for stocked toners, 3 to 7 business days for a special order toner or a discontinued OEM formula - OEM brands: PPG, Axalta, BASF Glasurit, Sherwin-Williams, Sikkens ## Why a paint code will not match your coach Every coach carries a code somewhere: a plate in a compartment, a sticker in the wet bay, a line in the delivery paperwork. That code is a historical record. It describes the formula that was sprayed on a production line years ago, under a specific gun setup, over a specific primer, in a specific batch of toners. By the time the coach is twelve years old, four things have moved. UV has broken down pigment, most aggressively in reds and in organic pigments generally. The clear has thinned from washing and polishing, so less of the base and less of the metallic reads back to your eye. The gelcoat under it, if the coach is fiberglass, has oxidized to a value the original pigment never had. And the drift is not uniform: the driver side upper on a coach stored facing southwest in the San Gabriel Valley is measurably lighter than the shaded passenger lower. A gelcoat surface is the extreme case. Gelcoat is pigmented polyester resin, not paint. It fades by surface chalking rather than by film loss, which means the color you see is partly a layer of degraded resin sitting over the actual pigment. There is no code that describes that condition, and there is no formula in any paint system that reproduces it. It has to be read off the panel and built. ## How the match is actually built The reading comes first. A spectrophotometer is placed flat against a prepared area of the panel and takes multiple readings at multiple angles, measuring reflected light across the visible spectrum rather than interpreting it the way an eye does. It returns candidate formulas from the paint system's database ranked by how close they sit to what it measured. That is the starting point, not the answer. The candidates come back as variants: the same nominal color in six or ten factory approved deviations, which exist precisely because production paint varied. We pull the variant deck, hold the chips against the panel in daylight and under a color corrected lamp, and narrow it. Two lights matter because of metamerism: two colors can read identical under one light source and clearly different under another. Then the spray out card. The chosen formula is mixed and sprayed onto a card with the exact gun, tip, pressure and coat count that will be used on the coach, flashed, cleared and cured. It is held against the panel wet and dry, at 90 degrees and at 45. If it fails, the formula is adjusted by toner and sprayed again. Two or three iterations on a difficult metallic is normal. On a three stage pearl the last step is a let down panel: a card sprayed in stepped sections with one, two, three and four mid coats over the same base, so the exact number of mid coat passes that lands on your coach is a measured decision rather than a judgment made through a spray gun with the coach already masked. - Panel prepared and read with a spectrophotometer at multiple points and angles - Candidate formulas pulled from the paint system database and ranked - Variant deck compared against the panel in daylight and under a corrected lamp - Spray out card built with production gun settings, cleared and cured - Toner adjustment and re spray until the card disappears against the panel - Let down panel for three stage pearls to fix mid coat count - Formula recorded to the repair file so a future touch up starts from the match, not the code ## Where color matching gets billed and why Color matching is rarely a standalone invoice. It is a set of hours inside a blend, a panel refinish, a cap replacement or a graphics reproduction. The band on this page exists because on difficult colors it is a large enough block of hours to be worth pricing on its own so you can see it. Labor is $210 per hour and paint supplies bill at $55 per paint hour, which includes the material burned on cards and let down panels. That is a real cost and it is the cost of not guessing. A shop that skips the cards saves three hours and then either delivers a mismatch or eats a re spray, and the re spray is twenty hours. Difficulty is predictable. Solid whites and off whites, which is most of the RV market, are usually two to six hours. Silver and light metallics are harder because flake orientation dominates. Reds and deep candies are the hardest, both because red pigment fades fastest and because tinting a red is unforgiving. A three stage pearl on a faded coach is where the top of this band lives. ## Not included - A paint code alone is not a match and we will not mix from one without reading the panel. - Color matching does not include the refinish itself. The mix is a step inside a blend, a panel refinish or a graphics job. - Matching to a photograph, a phone screen or a printed sample is not something we do. Color is read off a physical surface. ## Questions **Can you match my RV paint exactly?** On a coach whose finish is still sound, yes, close enough that a blend disappears in daylight. That is what the spectrophotometer reading, the variant deck and the spray out cards are for. What we will not do is promise a match from a paint code, because the code describes the factory color and your coach has drifted from it. We read the panel that is in front of us. **Why can a twelve year old gelcoat not be matched from a paint code?** Because gelcoat is not paint. It is pigmented polyester resin that fades by chalking at the surface, so the color you see is degraded resin over the original pigment. No code and no paint system formula describes that condition. The only way to reproduce it is to read the oxidized surface directly, build spray out cards and tint until a card disappears against the panel. **What is a spray out card and why does it add hours?** It is a test card sprayed with the exact gun, tip, pressure and coat count that will be used on your coach, then cleared and cured so it reads the way the finished panel will read. It adds two to six hours plus material. It is also the only honest way to know a match before the coach is masked, which is why it is not optional here. **Can you match a color across a fleet bought in different years?** Yes, and this is a common request from operators running mixed age vehicles. We read several units, identify how far apart they actually sit, and then recommend either a single target color that all of them can be brought to over time or a per unit match. Which one is correct depends on whether the vehicles are ever parked next to each other. --- Source: https://ocrv.club/rv-paint-shop/custom-color-matching OCRV Center, 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887 Phone (949) 799-3387. Email info@ocrvcenter.com. Serving Hacienda Heights and the surrounding area. 18.4 miles, 24 to 38 minutes via SR-60 west to Fullerton Rd, then south to La Palma Ave. In shop work only. All estimates are priced and credited against an authorized repair.