+ What’s involved in tinting paint?

This is the process of adding a Liquid Colourant to a white base paint to achieve a specific colour.

At www.buycolour.com our Liquid Colourants are perfect for tinting white base paint. These high colour strength, non-hazardous products can be mixed together to achieve a huge range of possible colours. You can make your own custom shades to suit your individual taste!

+ What are your Liquid Colourants made of?

In general, these are extremely fine particles of solid pigment held in a suspension (called a ‘dispersion’) in water. They are formulated to permit good compatibility and ease of mixing into base paints (the white emulsion paint).

+ How much colour will I need?

Well, most of today’s trendy pastel shades probably don’t contain more than the equivalent of about 0.2% of our Liquid Colourants. That’s just 20 millilitres (or grammes, if you prefer to work by weight, see the next FAQ) in 10 litres of white paint. We’d suggest you start with 0.05% to 0.1% for pastel depths, but don’t recommend you go above 5%. Please note, you can’t achieve really strong, deep shades if you use off-the-shelf white paint. That’s because normal white paint is designed to give good opacity, and the white pigment prevents deep colours from building up. If you add Red to a white paint, don’t expect to get a red shade- after all, white plus red = pink! You need to use a ‘Deep Tint Base’ for those deep shades. These paints can be purchased from some large DIY stores and specialist paint suppliers.

+ Practically, how do I do tint my own paint?

Adding colour to a white paint is not difficult. Mixing it in isn’t too hard either. The important bit is doing the job accurately and recording the quantities used. After all, once you’ve used up that first 10 litres of tinted paint, you’ll want to get the same shade for the next batch! Let’s say you want a pale shade and decide to be cautious and go for a 0.05% to start with, using a 10 litre bucket of white emulsion. Remember, you can always add more colour in later! 0.05% is 5 millilitres or grammes into 10 litres.
You could use the supplied syringe like this: Carefully and slowly draw up the Liquid Colourant, avoiding bubbles, then expel the excess to give 5 ml exactly, and wipe any droplets off the tip. You should then transfer a few hundred millilitres of the white paint to straight-sided clean plastic container and add the Liquid Colourant.(It’s easier to do this than adding the Liquid Colourant directly to the 10 litres). Mix in thoroughly with a palette knife (a flat-bladed steel kitchen palette knife is ideal). Then transfer this coloured paint to the rest of the white paint, scraping the sides well to ensure all the colour goes in. Then use the palette knife or preferably a drill with a mixer attachment and keep mixing until there are absolutely no streaks and the colour is uniform. Be sure to scape around the edges and base of the bucket.
You can also pre-dilute some of the Liquid Colourant to make measurements easier. If you only had 2.5 litres of white paint to tint at 0.05%, that’s only 1.25 ml of colour, which difficult to dispense accurately using a syringe. It would be best to take 20 ml (or grammes) Liquid Colourant and add to 180 g water (use a digital kitchen scale), mix well and use 12.5 ml of this to tint your 2.5 litres white paint. (The small amount of water that’s added to the paint won’t matter, and you can keep the unused diluted Liquid Colourant for a while to use later). Just note that kitchen scales may only be accurate to +/- 1 gramme, so try to ensure you are weighting out reasonable quantities each time to keep the ‘error’ to a minimum.

+ Should I do a ‘patch test’ first or just ‘go for it’?

We’d definitely recommend you test on a small scale first. Try tinting a small quantity of white paint first, say 100g. You won’t need to be too accurate at this stage. Make sure the Liquid Colourant mixes well with your paint, as some cheaper paints can ‘strip’ the protective layer from the pigment particles and make them flocculate, giving streaks and specks. Paint a small area of your wall, allow to dry completely and apply a second coat, just as you would do normally. If everything looks good once dry, you can proceed to tinting on a larger scale.

+ How should I store my Liquid Colourants?

Please store the Liquid Colourants in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight. These products contain a ‘humectant’ which helps prevent drying out, but please only open the container when you need to.

+ Can I tint paint that has already been tinted?

Yes, you can add additional tints but up to a limit.

+ I’d like a specific shade. Can you give me a recipe to give the shade I want?

We’ve been making Liquid Colourants for many years, but we’re not a paint manufacturer, so we don’t have recipes available for shade matching. There’s a lot of satisfaction to be gained in making you own unique colour, and with a bit of practice you can get the result you want. Needless to say, if you wanted for example a sunset yellow shade, you should purchase a reddish yellow and a red Liquid Colourant, and there’s a fair chance the shade you want will be achievable by mixing. One tip: Our Liquid Colourants contain a single pigment, and the colour you see in the bottle or on our website may not accurately reflect the shade you will get, especially at very pale depths. For example our Pigment Green 7 (name this…) Liquid Colourant would tend to give a bluish-green a pale depths, so if you wanted a yellowish green, then you’d need to mix with a yellow Liquid Colourant. Blacks tend not to stay ‘neutral’ at very pale depths, so if you wanted a bluish-pale grey, then you’d need a blue Liquid Colourant too. So, be sure to purchase at least two colours if you have a specific shade in mind.