Metallic Paint Jobs Washington DC

There will always be metallic colors that are virtually impossible to blend out nicely, and "tracking" will always be a concern. But there are steps painters can take to make these colors as painless as possible.

By Nathan Tarr
1/18/2010 10:17:15 AM


I see them all the time – silver cars with a bad blend somewhere on a door. When the car pulls away from me, I’m struck by a wicked dark side tone that allows me to see exactly what was done to it: full paint on the left fender and a bad blend on the driver’s door ending just before the door handle with a brutal halo effect.

I giggle when I see stuff like that, but I can sure relate to how that painter felt when he or she battled one of the many tricky colors he or she most surely preferred to never see again.

There are some colors that are just more difficult to paint than others – they’re virtually impossible to blend out nicely, and they’re never going to go away. Painters will always have to be on the lookout for extreme differences between the face and side tone of a color, and metallic tracking will always have to be a concern. Fortunately, there are steps we can all take to make tough metallic colors as painless as possible.  

Color Matching

As with all paint jobs, matching the color is the most vital step. It’s even more important with tricky colors, and it’s the first thing that needs to be done.  
I like to tape my test panel on the p...