Mismatched Paint

I had some front bumper work done on my car about 2 weeks ago. I picked it up and the car mostly sits. So a few days ago I pulled the car out into the sun and i noticed that the paint isn’t matched at all. Any thoughts or maybe I’m seeing wrong

Are you talking about the thin strip along the wheel well? Because that paint looks fine to me. The thin strip of the fender looks slightly darker due to the angle and shading difference from the front bumper cover area that mates up with it. Look at the adjoining flat surfaces of the two parts, they look almost identical to me. Now look along the bumper cover wheel well strip as it progresses toward the front of the car. See how it changes shade along the way? Same reason the fender strip looks slightly darker IMO…

1 Like

The bumper cover appears to be lighter than the metalwork.

1 Like

Look’s good to me it look’s like it is siting in bright sun try looking at it from different angle’s & see what it look’s like or get some one else who don’t know that it was painted and ask them to look at it. In time it will fade so it will not be noticed.

Different people have different perception of color.

To me the picture posted screams “this car was in a paint-shop”, but this is probably because I had few episodes where I made some bodywork and my eye “knows” all too well where to look for the trouble.

I was selling my old white-pearl Altima where I repainted the driver-side rear quarter-panel and it came out one shade lighter then the rest of the car, it was a terrible eyesore to me.
The new happy owner of the car did not see it at all, until I pointed him out and said “look, this panel was painted, but I can assure you that good quality material was used”.
It took him some time to adjust and say “…yeh… it’s slightly different”.

It is very difficult to get the same color appearance on sheet metal and on the plastic/fiberglass bumper covers. It would seem simple, factory does it, but difficult on repairs. Some colors will match, some shades will not. Why? I don’t know. I have a light metallic green, body and bumper cover both properly prepped and shot with same paint, slightly different when examined closely. Perhaps has to do with curing?

1 Like

It really depends on how they painted it. If they painted the bumper separately off the car, there will be a slight mis-match almost guaranteed. To minimize that they use computers to view the current paint and adjust the mix formula to match. But, still to get a perfect match in the sun they have to blend the new paint into the adjacent panels so the difference doesn’t show. Of course that raises the price and of course other issues like painting over factory paint. So for a bumper they would have to blend into both fenders and then also maybe the hood. So kind of a toss up.

When my bumper was replaced on my Pontiac, I also had hood and one fender damage. So they had to blend in the hood and one fender. When I got it home though I could see a very slight difference on the fender not blended. Really not noticeable but I know they didn’t blend it. Overall it was a great job. So the question is, is it bad enough to have them try to blend it in again or not. Prolly too late now and should have been discussed prior to the painting. If it were me I’d leave well enough alone, which I did. Even with the computer matching equipment now, there is no such thing as a perfect paint match due to gun technique, solvents, additives and so on. All that is guaranteed is a “blendable match” .

Yes, blending-in is a right way of getting a good match, works great on 2-layer paint (base+clear), but it fails miserably on 3-layered finishes, where you have pearl as a mid-layer :frowning:

Can you post a similar picture of the rear bumper for comparison?

Well the accident was through the insurance company’s so my insurance didn’t say no to any extra work… the drive fender got damaged in the accident which tney were able to massage back to normal

There’s a picture of the rear unfortunately it’s raining… i will attach another one of the front of the car in the same lighting and conditions

Yes to me it’s incredibly noticeable… and to others who know my car have mentioned it…super close up it’s hard to tell but at a distance it speaks for itself


This is when the accident happened and it looked a lot closer than it does now

Have you talked to the repair shop and your insurance ? Those are 2 places you need to get involved before it is too late.

Yes i have, the body shop has 2 in my area i went to X for the repairs. Now I’m going to first established Y to get the help on this which includes the owner…they are review it and it’s not too late my insurance company guarantees the work as well as the body shop who has a life time guarantee on the paint

I also forgot to mention the reason why I’m going to Y instead of X when i first picked up my car none of my door speakers & my aftermarket subwoofers… further inspection they blew the fuse to the door speaker as well as my 150amp fuse to my subwoofers :confused:

It’s the whole bumper and fender… from a distance it tells it all…at least to me the whole bumper was repainted

I can see the difference in color, In your first phopo is that road grime or chipping?

Like I said it looked good to me but seeing it in a picture and seeing it person is two different thing’s, that last posted in answer to twin turbo a little farther away look’s a little different than the 1st one you posted. Good luck with the body shop.