White most popular colour with car owners – Spies Hecker
Whether as a solid or pearlescent colour, white continues to be the most popular colour amongst car owners. The wide range of shades in which it appears, poses a challenge to refinishers when it comes to paint repairs. With the Spies Hecker colour tools, bodyshops are well prepared to meet that challenge.
The Axalta Color Popularity Report 2013 has confirmed it’s true: Europe and worldwide, white is number one on the car buyers’ popularity chart. It accounts for 29 per cent of all car sales. This is backed up by Frank Barduna of Spies Hecker International’s technical service: “White has been the absolute bestseller for the last two years. Car owners obviously like what this colour gives them.”
Getting the shade right
But not every white is the same. From solid white to pearlescent, the nuances and effects of white are almost limitless, so refinishers face a number of challenges. “Getting the colour variant right is an art,” Barduna explains. For solid whites, digital colour measurement tools like the Spies Hecker ColorDialog spectrophotometer and the new ColorDialog Delta-Scan can help to find the correct shade.
When it comes to matching a pearlescent white for a collision repair, Barduna says: “Refinishers should spray sample panels to achieve the precise colour match. After selecting the colour formula from the database, the basecoat colour is sprayed onto the sample panel. It is followed by one to three further passes of the effect colour. That is the only way in which refinishers can determine the right effect and the number of passes that are required for the repair. Each colour formulation for tri-coat systems contains the necessary information to produce the base colour and the effect colours.”
Activator of added benefit
“The addition of Permayhd Hardener 3080 to the basecoat benefits the entire tri-coat paint structure to produce a perfect result,” Barduna emphasizes. “When blending-in into the adjacent part it is very important to spray from the edges of the existing OEM paint into the repair zone, In other words from the outside in,” Barduna concludes.
