Re-painting versus touch-up... does paint matching work?

[Josef Torkelsen]

I have over 45 units now and every time a vacancy comes up, the property managers want to repaint the entire unit even though 99% of the paint looks great in a lot of cases.  This is obviously eating into cash flow!  

They tell me that touching up paint doesn't work because paint matching never works and even if you have the same exact paint brand and color, it won't look the same.  

What's your experience... do you typically touch up paint?  Do you have success with paint matching and any lessons learned in this area?  #askbp  Appreciate your help!  Losing 3 months rent due to repainting is not something I'm a fan of.

[Mark Gallagher]

@Josef Torkelsen

A former paint salesman, I speak with knowledge from both sides of the counter so to speak here.

Paint DOES touch up. BUT, you have to take into consideration the following:

1) Should be the same paint, from the same batch. Meaning, you need to be using pre-packaged colors. Not tinted at the store. Tinted paint essentially causes slight color variations from 5 gallon to 5 gallon. When buying pre-packaged colors, you have say 5000 gallons at a time being tinted. Less variation.

2) The paint needs to be touched up in the SAME manner it was applied. You can't spray an entire unit, and then try to touch up with a brush. 2 entirely different textures - the paint is likely matching, but you see different textures and the light reflects differently. Units can be sprayed, but you have to spray it on to touch up. Most will spray it on, and back-roll over it so you can roll on the touch up. 

3) Paint needs to be shaken before touched up.

4) Water it down a small amount before touching up.

If you get your entire buildings the same color, same paint you should be able to touch it up. At the very least, you could paint corner to corner on a few walls instead of the entire unit.