Paint mixing library
How to mix any paint color, with real pigment ratios.
Practical guides built on real pigment data and calibrated for acrylic, oil and watercolour. Open Chromilla’s color mixing calculator to recalibrate any of these recipes for your specific brand.
This hub is the whole of what Chromilla knows about mixing, sorted so you can find it. Start with your medium if you want technique, or jump straight to a color if you already know the target. New to the vocabulary? The paint mixing glossary defines 25 terms in plain words.
By medium
Acrylic
Fast, opaque, and it dries darker than it looks wet.
Start here
How to mix acrylic paintMixing technique
Color guides
Every colour in acrylicOil
Dries true to color, so tinting strength decides the mix.
Start here
How to mix oil paintMixing technique
Color guides
Every colour in oilWatercolor
Two controls: the ratio sets hue, the water sets value.
Start here
How to mix watercolor paintMixing technique
Color guides
Every colour in watercolorCross-medium fundamentals sit further down this page: technique, ratios and fixing a mix that has gone wrong.
Reference
Interactive color mixing chart
A printable pigment mixing chart that behaves like paint rather than light. Tap any cell to see the two tubes behind it.
Mix library
Straight-to-the-ratio recipes for 80+ colors
If you already know what you want to mix and just need the pigment percentages, skip the reading and browse the short recipes by acrylic, oil, and watercolor.
Open the mix library →Color recipes
Real pigment ratios for a specific target hex, in acrylic, oil and watercolor.
Skin tones
Skin tone is never one flat color. Start from one of these three values, then adjust warmer or cooler for the light on your subject.
In-depth color guides
Longer articles for colors that need more than a ratio: history, common mistakes, and how the mix shifts across acrylic, oil and watercolor. Start with what colors make brown, the most asked question in the library.
What colors make brown paint
What colors make brown, in plain terms. Three complementary pairings, exact tube ratios, and how to shift the mix warmer, cooler, lighter or darker.
Read guideWhat colors make green: clean greens, sages and forest greens
Real pigment recipes for spring green, true green, sage, mint, forest and olive in acrylic, oil and watercolor. With swatches and exact ratios.
Read guideWhat colors make orange: warm, peach, burnt and rust
Pigment recipes for cadmium orange, peach, burnt orange, rust and terracotta in acrylic, oil and watercolor. With component swatches and ratios.
Read guideWhat colors make purple: violet, lavender and plum
Pigment recipes for royal purple, lavender, lilac, mauve and plum in acrylic, oil and watercolor. With component swatches and exact ratios.
Read guideWhat colors make gray: warm, cool and chromatic grays
Real pigment recipes for warm gray, cool gray and chromatic gray in acrylic, oil and watercolor, built from complements instead of black and white.
Read guideHow to mix skin tone paint: fair to deep, any medium
Step-by-step skin tone recipes from fair to deep, with warm, cool and olive undertone adjustments, for acrylic, oil and watercolor.
Read guideHow to mix olive green paint: golden, deep and khaki variants
Pigment recipes for olive green, golden olive, olive drab and khaki, built from Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine Blue and earth tones.
Read guide
Technique
How to mix, sample, lighten, darken and stay clean while you work.
How to mix two paint colors to get a specific color
Step-by-step guide to mixing two paint colors to match a target shade, with real pigment ratios for acrylic, oil and watercolor.
Read guideHow to make a color lighter or darker without changing the hue
Use tints, shades and complementary colors to change a paint's value without shifting its hue. Pigment-by-pigment guide.
Read guideHow to mix paint to match a photo or a color you see
Sample any photo or real-world reference, get the hex code, and mix the matching paint color using your existing tubes.
Read guideWhat are complementary colors and how do I use them to neutralize a color?
Use complementary colors to knock down saturation, build chromatic grays, and deepen shadows without going dead.
Read guideAcrylic dry shift: how to mix for the dried color
Acrylic dries darker than it looks wet. Here is the size of the shift, why the wet swatch lies, and how Chromilla aims at the dried color instead.
Read guideOil tinting strength: why a little blue goes further than a little white
Tinting strength, not volume, decides an oil mix. Worked ratios showing why 4 per cent phthalo blue changes a mix more than 40 per cent white.
Read guideWatercolor: dilution is not the same as mixing
Adding water changes value, not hue. Where the pigment ratio still decides the color, with worked watercolor numbers from the Chromilla solver.
Read guideHow to mix paint from a photo
Turn any reference photo into real paint recipes. Split it into value zones, read each zone's color, and mix it with the tubes you already own.
Read guideHow to paint from a photo, step by step
Paint from a photo step by step: grid the drawing, plan the values, then mix each zone with your own paint tubes. Works for acrylic, oil and watercolor.
Read guide
Ratios & scaling
Working ratios, brand calibration and scaling a recipe up to a full litre.
Paint mixing chart: real ratios for custom colors
A working paint mixing chart with real ratios for custom colors. Worked examples, tinting-strength reference, and how to scale to any volume.
Read guideCan I mix different paint brands or finishes together?
When you can safely mix paint brands, when you can't, and how mixing matte with gloss or student with artist grade affects the result.
Read guideHow much of each color do I need to mix a liter or gallon of a custom shade?
Convert percentage-based paint mixing recipes to real volumes (ml, liters or gallons) without losing color accuracy.
Read guide
Fixing problems
Rescue a mix that has gone muddy, too dark or too bright.
How to fix paint that's too dark, too bright, or muddy
Rescue a mix that's gone muddy, too dark, or oversaturated. Specific corrections for each failure mode.
Read guide