Finding a vinyl color match to Matthews Paint Code?

I once remember someone sharing this neato trick to get a specific vinyl color. Something about taking colored vinyl, and printing on that to get a match.

https://signs101.com/threads/printing-on-color-vinyl.160449/

 

Will you be able to see it? It looks like a dark color

 

that will be pretty dark on a window all by itself.

 

boudica,
you beat me to it (that is the correct answer)
andy, don't you have a gerber edge?
i will check my spectratone book in the morning
if worse comes to worse, i will ship it to you, if you ship it right back when you are done

 

So, you wanna print with mild solvent inks and have it last at least 7 years in full sun and you're kinda down south. Ahh, do you see a flaw in your request ??

Unless you find a color in cast die cut, you ain't gonna get anything much past 4, maybe 5 years. If you hafta be that deadballs on, even printing overtop another blue, it will fade from that, too.​

 

You can totally match pms colors to matthews paint with the web app. It's always worked really well for us...

 

7 years is a long time. After year 2, they will lose count and forget who did the work.

 

Oh, going the other way I see. Maybe slap some pms values that you know you can get vinyl into matthews paint and see if that color comes up.
Otherwise you can at least paint perf and apply it. Surely you can do something similar with a different vinyl...

 

Assuming that the RGB values in Matthews Adobe Swatch File
are based on an SRGB color profile, the L*a*b* for that color
is: 22.3633, 0.3282, -31.7286.

You could use this in order to compare a vinyl you are considering with this.

I have Matthews confirming that the basis of their RGB values is SRGB, and will get back to you.

 

Andy, a warrantee on your invention would be all on you. What kind of spray paint guaranteed to work on the vinyl + the warranty on vinyl spray painted.
Interesting out of the box idea.

 

That's pretty ghetto and would crack. It's hard enough to match paint to paint, even with the same color code and same line of paint. Get close enough and call it a day because you're not going to be able to see it on the window anyways.

 

Perhaps if you looked into printing the color on an outdoor traffic sign vinyl and using traffic sign outdoor laminate materials as a protective you could achieve the 7 year goal.

 

I heard back from Matthews paint- the person who created their swatch files
is no longer working at the company, and they cannot tell me the appropriate
color space profile for their swatch files.

 

Matthes has a flex additive for shooting vinyl. I've only ever tried it on 3m dual color perf, and it worked beautifully. I was much more confident selling that for extended life than I was telling them a latex print on perf would exceed 5 years. Plus it was a white cabinet with lexan backing up grey lettering, so if the grey failed it would just be white on white. I couldn't even tell that the vinyl had been painted shy of the different color.

 

Dark anything on glass won't work like the client expects it to. Learned this from an old time sign guy. He said: "Windows are like mirrors, they don't reflect light only dark".(let that sink in for a minute) Under certain lighting conditions that blue will disappear or be hard to read.

That little bit of wisdom has served me well for decades.