Interior paint (1 Viewer)

[Philip_T]

I was wondering if there is a standard color of white that most builders use to paint the interior walls of homes (Eggshell, Antique White maybe)?. We are getting a few marks and nicks on our walls and it could use some touch up, however, when we bought our home last year, the seller did not have any touch up paint for us. Home was built in the early 90's. I cut out a small piece of drywall that had the same color of white on it from our basement to take to Home Depot to see if they could match it, but the color they came up with did not match quite right. Any ideas?

 

[Jim_F]

Sears did an amazing job of matching the color of my garage paint, just from a big paint chip stuck to a piece of tape. I did spot touchup on the back of the garage and it was invisible except for the shine on the newer paint when viewed at an angle.

 

[Mike Wladyka]

most of the time builders/paint contractors cut the paint quite a bit by adding water(for interior paint), or using cheap paint that has huge amounts of water in it and it is pretty damn cheap...and by cheap i mean it costs less than a $1/gallon to make. either way it is essentially doing the same thing. Touch up on crappy cheap paint will always look bad, of course on whites it is less noticeable. my suggestion is to find something that is close as possible and paint the whole wall or maybe even the room. i am not sure how you like the idea of painting the whole thing, but it depends if you can live with slightly off touch up marks.

 

[ClintS]

There is NO standard color "builder's" use. Now the particular builder that built your house may very well have used a standard color but the only way to find out would be to know who the builder was and contact them. In fact even then you may not get an answer as they generally contract out their paint work to a painter and likely use or used more than one who likely isnt around anymore. A long shot at best. Being that its been 10 to 15 years your better off A)Trying to match color by taking paint samples to the store (some stores/employees are better than other or B) repainting.

I would personally choose B as you just cant beat a fresh coat of paint over a marginal matched touch up job.

One other thing to try just for dirty paint marks is a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. They work miracles on dirty paint but not on nicks where the underlying paint is damaged.

 

[Philip_T]

Thanks for the info guys. I was afraid that there might not be any 'standard' for paint colors.

Sounds interesting, I'll have to check that out.

 

[Jordan_E]

That Magic Eraser thing DOES work! I was a little leery about it, but when my wife brought it home and I gave it a try - worked like a charm! It does go away rather quickly, especially if you have a lot of marks like we did, but worth the price.