Color tolerances, Total Appearance

Color tolerances vary greatly depending on the application. Tolerances are typically very strict for the car repair industry, and less strict for powder coatings, for wall paints or for cosmetics. ColorsAI.nl can help you to determine what color tolerance is applicable for your product and your market. 

I have many years of industrial experience in determining tolerances for the automotive and the car repair industry. See for example my publication on setting tolerances for automotive [1].  But more recently I also worked out tolerances for powder coatings, coil coatings and the cosmetics industry.

Apart from color, also other visual aspects influence tolerances. For metallic paints also differences in sparkle, graininess and gloss play a role. In such cases it is important to quantify the so-called Total Appearance Difference. With my team I worked for years on this topic, see for example [2]. This topic is still heavily investigated, also by me. Please contact me if you need help or if you like to contribute.

[1] Kirchner, Ravi, "Setting tolerances on color and texture for automotive coatings", Color Research and Applications 39 (2014) 88-98, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/col.21767 

[2] Dekker, Kirchner et al., "Total appearance differences for metallic and pearlescent materials: contributions from color and texture", Color Research and Application 36 (2011) 4-14. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/col.20586