Undercoat Color and Paint Matching

When painting your classic car, you know, there's some variables that you got to consider in order to get a good match, especially if you're doing like painting a separate panel or you know, a, a complete car, the under color, the paint, what's painted underneath your paint can affect what the final color is. And here to help us make sense of it all is Terry Wright, Terry, how is the, how does your under color affect your final paint? Well, when you're finally decided to paint your car, you really got to consider about consider what the other color is used. There's light and medium colors can be very transparent and take many coats to achieve complete coverage. Most new vehicles today don't have complete coverage and the the undercoat color becomes part of the color we see. Sometimes this is even intentional to achieve a desired result. You may like how a red metallic looks over a light gray versus a dark gray, yellows and oranges look really good, look the best when they're painting over white. And I have a couple of panels here, I'd like to kind of show you that to give you an example what we're talking about. Let's take a look. So let me just back up this a little bit on the, on the most new cars today. Their, their, their covers is not there. They're not covered. So we're seeing the undercoat. Yeah. And it, and a lot of the paints are formulated. So they're not, to me, at least they're not as opaque as they once were there. They just not as much solids in it. That would just hide everything. But not to say that in the old days that, that wasn't true also. It just, we just put on more and more paint. The, uh, what I have, you know, noticed is that you're, you know, back in the day when we paint a car, you know, it wasn't unusual. You see a couple of spots right before you're, you're gonna go hit the paint, you a quick touch up a few things with a different color primer. And nowadays, you know, you're pretty, pretty taboo. Uh, you're right about that and that happens a lot. Um, it's, it wasn't unusual for us to go and repair something and, and throw a little gray primer on something and paint it and go what the heck happened here. I can see exactly where the primer is. Well, this is what's happening. Um, it's not, uh, it's, it's, it's a lot more prevalent today with base coat clear coats than it was single stages like you were taught him about back in the day, there's a lot more pigment load and it just covered a lot better. But now the color is just there to be pretty. It's not giving you the protection at all. And, and manufacturing, um, couple reasons, they're gonna save a lot of money if they don't spray the coverage. They also have robots that apply very uniform and they can put on very thin layers of paint uniform. Um That's what typically happens. So when we're in the free finish end of it, or if you're working on your car and you use a different color undercoat, that's really important to take that into consideration. Um, because that has now become a part of your finish, which whether you like it or not. Yeah. So a couple of panels here, um, the red one is, uh, there's four coats of red over the over this uh, white, black tan. So you have the same amount of red across the whole, the whole panel. The only difference here is you've painted here. This looks like a tan and then a white, a gray and a black. Exactly. And those are just the undercoat. That's the undercoat. So it could be your sealer. Ok. It could be a, a ground coat that you, maybe you had a bunch of leftover paint that you want to use up. You can put that down first, you know, but that will change your color. Yeah. And I know from my own experience, you know, uh, having painted cards where I just like to throw on a whole coat of epoxy primer before and then I can scuff that and I got a good sealed up solid surface, but like the, the primer, the epoxy primer, I select the color is gonna affect how my final paint look. There's no doubt about it, no doubt about it. So, if it's all one color, it doesn't matter because you're doing the whole car. Yeah, but if you're coming back and refinishing or spotting in something you, you have to repair, that's really important. So, uh, good to, good to remember what you use so you can use it again and duplicate it again. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. Um, yellow one over here. Um, there's different, uh, I don't know how well it's gonna show but there's four separate coats of yellow on here. 1234 over, uh, the white, black and tan also. Um, I said that yellows work best over white and it really be, you can see this where you've only got one coat of yellow over a white background and suddenly you have a nice and vibrant yellow there. Right? I've had, uh, I've had plenty of painters that are, that'll paint over a gray or a, a charcoal and go, I can't, I gotta put 10 coats on, get coverage, use white first and, and whoa, I got two coats and it looks great. You don't have to put it on as a sealer. You can mix it up a base coat and put it down first. It doesn't, it doesn't care what it's over. You can put a coat of white down first. If you, if you want, if you don't wanna seal it again, it's all ready to go and you don't need to seal. Yeah, but very important that undercoat really makes a difference. There are some colors today that they the undercoat is a part of the uh about uh is a part of the, the final finish and it's considered a layer. So you can take a three stage paint to a four stage paint and it's just because of the undercoat. Ok. Yeah, I know it in that way. I know years ago I had a custom painter that kind of showed me the trick of painting white underneath reds. And he says that's how I get a real, I get a red that everybody wonders where did you get that red? And it was all because he was using a white undercoat. So I'll, I'll refer back to uh some another topic we talked about in, in um it's, it's light and light source and color is reflecting light well over white, that lights going down that white and it's kicking back and all that light is coming back out. So that's why the whites really make really will show that much better if it's black the black will absorb that light. It'll be harder for you. You can even see that here where your darker ones become more muddy and, and darker where the white, the red over the white just really pops. So Terry as a professional painter, do you have an under color that you recommend or choose to use for your stuff? Well, when I'm given a choice, there's definitely uh colors that I'd like to use under certain colors. The yellow is, is a big one. That one I'm going white all the time because it just makes me uh look like I have coverage quicker, ok. The red. Um I like using this tan undercoat because of the light reflect value. It's pretty similar to that tan to that red. If I were to take all the color out and make them in the gray scale, they look really similar. OK? So I'm getting an undercoat that's pretty similar on the light reflect value of that red. So I'm not fighting like a dark, a black, take a lot more color to, to get the results. I want more. The tan will get me there quicker. So it's all about tricking the eye, but there definitely are advantages to using a uh an undercoat. There are some, like I said, there's some colors that require a certain undercoat and you have to use those to get the color you're looking for. But when you, when they don't tell you to do that, then it's whatever you want to use and you just go with experience. But yeah, that's, these are two really great examples of that. Yellow is white for me, red is if I had that uh for an option for tan, great, great, great advice. And you know, I'm sure, you know, if, if you know the our members are wondering which one should they use? You can always test it. You know, it, it doesn't take any time to do a spray out and test it and see, then you have something to hold up and actually decide out in the daylight what you want to use. Right.