Although painting a room or two in your house may seem like a straightforward task, there are many steps to the process that make it more complicated than one might think.
Most people know that before you paint, you need to buy your paint color and a primer, some paintbrushes, and painter’s tape. You’ll need to tape off the edges of the room before applying your primer, letting it dry, then applying two or more coats of color.
One aspect of home paints that customers generally don’t see is the mixing. The employees at your local paint or hardware store have to take something called a base paint, add pigment to it, and mix the paint to your color choice.
So, what are base paints and what are they used for? Base paints are the liquid substance used to mix in pigments to create color paints. They’re used by paint companies to create the hundreds or thousands of color options for interior and exterior house paints through a process called paint tinting.
Although you can tint your own paint, it’s usually best to leave it up to the professionals. They have machines with formulas and codes that create the exact pigment you want every time. When tinting paint yourself, the color may turn out differently than you imagined.
Keep reading to learn all about base paints and how they’re used for the home painting process.
What Is Base Paint?
As the name implies, base paint is the base liquid substance to which colorants, or highly concentrated pigments, are added to create color paints for interior and exterior house painting.
Some people see the term base paint and think it’s the paint that you put on the walls initially before adding your color, but that type of paint is called primer and is a different paint entirely.
Base paints range on a spectrum from clear to lightly tinted white. It’s important to note that even the whitest base paints are not white paint; they just have the most amount of white tint added to help create light-colored paints.
There are different types of base paints, which we will detail in the section below. Each type of base paint has a different purpose for different shades and hues of color.
All color paints that you purchase at a paint or hardware store will start as a base paint before having colorants added to them.
Types Of Base Paints
There are four different types of base paints. Regardless of the type, each base paint is made with a certain amount of titanium dioxide, which gives it a level of white pigment.
Even the whitest type of base paint doesn’t have more than around 30% of titanium dioxide, though, so it should not be considered the same thing as white paint.
Base paint without any added titanium oxide is clear, so even if you’re buying the whitest base paint there is, that 30% still isn’t enough white to saturate a space.
If you want to paint your walls white, you’ll need an actual can of white paint and not just a light base paint.
There are two systems used to identify the four types of base paint. Some companies identify them by numbers while others identify them by names.
Below is each type of base paint with their corresponding number and name. Each type has a specific purpose, so be sure to read each one thoroughly before choosing your base paint.
1. White Base
If you’re looking to paint your walls white or another very light shade of color, such as a pastel, you’ll need to start with Base 1, also referred to as white base.
Base 1 has the highest amount of titanium oxide, or white pigment. This gives you the best starting point when adding other pigments to make them lighter in color.
Although white base has the most amount of white pigment, it is still not a white paint. It’s simply the base with which white paint is made. You can, however, use white base to spruce up walls in your home that are already white.
Since base paint is clear, and white base has around 30% of white pigment added, this should be enough to give a soft, fresh coating on top of existing white walls.
2. Pastel Base and Light Base
The next step down, containing a little less white pigment than Base 1, is Base 2. For Base 2, there are two names used: pastel base and light base.
As you can guess, Base 2 is perfect for those lighter shades. You’ll get a color that’s a little richer and darker compared to Base 1, but it will still be much lighter than Base 3 or Base 4.
Because light base has less titanium oxide, it’s ready to take on more colorant compared to white base. This is what gives it a richer color in comparison.
Pastel base can also be used for pastel colors, of course, just as white base can. There is a large range of colors and shades that fall under the pastel color palette, and you can achieve any of them by using either Base 1 or Base 2.
3. Medium Base
Base 3, also called medium base, is where you start to get those darker colors. Rather than a soft pink, baby pink, or rose pink, you now move into magenta, fuchsia, or hot pink.
Medium base doesn’t always mean that your color will be dark. It just means it will be more vibrant in color.
Since Base 3 has even less titanium oxide than the two preceding base paints, it will be ready to take in even more colorant. The colorants added may include black to darken it up, or may simply be a combination of colors to create something bright.
From forest green to cerulean blue, you can achieve those rich, saturated, vibrant colors that you usually go for when coloring or painting on a canvas for your walls with Base 3, or medium base.
4. Deep Base
The type of base paint with the least amount of titanium oxide, making it the clearest of them all, is Base 4, also known as deep base.
Deep base paint is for those extremely dark, rich colors that need a lot of pigment to get to the right shade. This would include colors such as maroon, navy, or dark violet.
If you’re going for a really saturated color, then Base 4 is what you’ll need to achieve it. It’s the base paint that has the ability to take on the most amount of colorant from all the base paints available.
Since Base 4 is the clearest base paint of the four main types, it would be the option you’d want the least if sprucing up your white walls.
Using Deep Base on its own without any colorants or pigments added will leave your walls looking uneven, sloppy, and covered in brush strokes.
There may even be patches of the small amount of white pigment that’s in there, but these patches will be inconsistent and look out of place.
Other Base Paint Types
Aside from the four main types of base paint, there are two more that are also used occasionally.
Accent base is very similar to deep base. They have a tiny amount of white pigment added, so they’re ready to take on a lot of colorant.
This openness to pigment creates bright, rich colors that stand out. These types of colors, when used on walls in a home, are generally used for an accent wall. Therefore, this type of base paint is called accent base.
You may also see clear base on some store shelves. Clear base is exactly what it sounds like – a clear batch of base paint with no white pigment added.
Clear base is also used in a similar way to deep base. It’s best for colors that need to be dark, as it has no white pigment to lighten up the colors.
What Are Base Paints Used For?
To create the paint color of each individual person’s dreams, paint companies have to be able to mix them.
There simply wouldn’t be enough shelf space in one paint or hardware store to have multiple cans of every single color available.
These colors are created by taking a base paint and adding colorant to it. Whether working with interior or exterior paint, you’ll always start with this base paint and add pigments in order to reach your desired color.
The tinting process won’t take long, and it’s generally done right there while you wait. We’ll go into more detail on the tinting process in a section below.
Why Do You Need Base Paints?
Base paints are necessary because, as we noted above, there’s no way to fit all the color choices for each paint manufacturer on the shelves.
When you visit a paint store, or the paint section of a hardware store, you’ll see a wall with dedicated stacks of paint sample cards. Each of these paint sample cards usually has 2-4 colors on it. If you look at how many sample cards that are and multiply it by 2, 3, or even 4, you’ll see the need for base paints.
Generally, when you’re purchasing paint, the cans on the shelves are the base paints. You’ll select the can that has the brand, finish, and base type you want, then bring it to the counter for mixing.
Base paints are also necessary to save money. Simply mixing color paints together to reach the desired shade will take a lot more pre-colored paint. Pigments can be expensive, and to do it this way would cost a lot of money.
Another hindrance to simply mixing color paints is that the colors will only get darker. The more you mix colors, the darker they get. And you can add white, but then you’ll have to add it slowly to reach your desired shade.
The mixing process without base paints would be complicated, require too much pigmented paint, and cost more money than it’s worth.
Starting with a base paint and adding a little pigment is a much easier process for the manufacturers, employees, and customers!
How To Use Base Paints: Tinting Paint Process
When you buy paint at the store, you’ll start by choosing your base paint. You’ll look at your options for brand, finish, and base, then pick the can you want from the shelf.
If you’ve already chosen the color, you’ll bring that color card and your base paint to the counter. An employee at the paint store or hardware store will take your base paint and color card.
Paint stores and paint departments at hardware stores have special machines that mix the paints perfectly. The employee will punch in a code that corresponds to the color you have chosen, and then the machine will do the rest.
The machine is programmed to add in a specific amount of specific pigments based on the code that the employee entered.
Once the pigments have been added, the lid will go back on the can and it will spin until the colors have been properly mixed. When you open the can, the color of paint you have chosen will now be there.
Keep in mind that sometimes the color of paint looks different in its liquid form compared to how it dries on your wall. Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t look exactly how it does on the color sample card you pulled.
A great way to make sure you choose exactly the right color you want is to ask for a paint sample.
With a paint sample, the employee will mix a very small can of base paint with a small amount of pigments. The can will only have enough for you to do a sample swatch of the paint on your wall.
This is a good idea not only to see how it dries on your wall, but how it looks in the lighting you have.
You’ll be able to see how that color looks with the lamps or overhead lighting on, how it looks in the daytime with natural sunlight, and how it looks at night in the dark.
How To Tint Your Own Base Paint
Tinting your own base paint is not recommended. Usually, people who try to tint their own base paint at home end up with an uneven color and disappointing results.
However, if you do want to try tinting your own base paint at home, there is a way to do it.
The best way is to start not with a base paint, but a can of paint similar in color to what you want. For example, if your goal is to have cerulean blue, you can start with a can of baby blue paint.
To tint the existing color, you’ll want to add in more blue paint. You can either use a small amount from another can of paint, or get one of those sample paint cans we mentioned above in a dark blue color.
Add the dark blue to your baby blue until it starts reaching the bright, vibrant shade of cerulean you’re looking for. If it gets too dark, add a little white.
If you want to tint your own light or pastel colored paint, you’ll want to start with a can of white paint. Slowly add in your tinting paint in the color you desire until it reaches the shade you want.
Since tinting your own paint at home requires more supplies and colors, it’s usually better to just allow the professionals to do it.
Letting the paint store tint your paint for you will take barely any time at all, saving you a lot of time, money, and wasted materials.
You should never try to tint your own paint with any other color substance, like food dye. Using a different type of pigment can ruin the chemical make-up of the paint or cause dangerous chemical reactions.
Can You Use Base Paints Without Tinting?
Base paints are used for exactly what their name implies: being a base. They are not meant to be an independent paint, but rather intended to be a base with which to start.
Using a base paint without tinting using proper pigment or colorant will result in an awkward looking wall. It will be patchy, uneven, rough, and all around unappealing.
The only time you could consider using a base paint without tinting would be if you are painting over walls that are white. They have to be white, and not any other color.
If you want to use base paint to freshen up your white walls, then you can pick up a can of white base, or Base 1, and use that to paint over your walls.
This isn’t highly recommended as you’ll still end up with patches and an uneven texture, but the white pigment in Base 1 is enough to provide a fresh layer to your existing white walls.
However, you can likely pick up a can of regular white paint for nearly the same price as the base paint and get much better results. We recommend going this route instead.
If you happened to already use a base paint and aren’t sure what to do next, don’t worry! There’s a simple solution.
Allow the base paint to dry on your walls as usual. Once it’s completely dry, you can go ahead and repaint with the color paint that you intended (even if it’s just white).
It’s important to allow the base paint to fully dry before adding your color paint. Otherwise, the color paint will try to blend with the base paint on the wall and lead to a muddy, uneven, cloudy color.
Can You Prime With Base Paint?
Although it may seem like base paint would make a good primer due to its lack of color and slightly white tint, this would be a bad idea.
Base paint has a very different chemical make-up than primer.
Primer is made with around 20-30% synthetic resin, which makes this substance harder and stickier than paint. It’s intended to provide a smooth, even coating on your wall that will take on your color paints better than a plain wall.
Base paint, like all paints, is made with binders and solvents, plus other additives. Adding pigment is what finishes base paint and makes it a regular can of paint.
With the absence of resin, base paint will take on a very different quality when applied to a wall. You won’t get the smooth, even coverage that you do with a primer. Instead, you’ll get a splotchy and uneven texture.
If you’re going to paint your walls, it’s important to start with a primer, then pick out a base paint to add pigments too.
As we’ve mentioned, you shouldn’t use base paint without tinting it with pigment. Be sure to have it properly tinted at the paint store or hardware store before applying it on top of your primer.
Can You Tint Base Paint Cans That Have Already Been Used?
Technically, you can try to tint base paint that’s already been used, but it won’t lead to good results.
If you have a can of base paint that you used for another project and didn’t add any colorant too, you can try to tint it with fresh pigment.
The only problem is that the machines that tint the base paint are programmed to add the exact amount of pigments needed to tint a full paint can – not one that’s been used.
When the machine adds the pigments to a partially full paint can, the results won’t be the same. You’ll get a very different color than what you were expecting.
You can probably get away with doing this if you’ve barely used any of the base paint, like if there’s only been a half-inch of paint used. If your base paint can is half-empty, though, you’ll likely wind up with lousy results.
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