Paint mixing library
How to mix any paint colour, with real pigment ratios.
Practical guides built on real pigment data and calibrated for acrylic, oil and watercolour. Open Chromilla’s colour mixing calculator to recalibrate any of these recipes for your specific brand.
Reference
Interactive colour 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+ colours
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 watercolour.
Open the mix library →Colour recipes
Real pigment ratios for a specific target hex, in acrylic, oil and watercolour.
Skin tones
Skin tone is never one flat colour. Start from one of these three values, then adjust warmer or cooler for the light on your subject.
In-depth colour guides
Longer articles for colours that need more than a ratio: history, common mistakes, and how the mix shifts across acrylic, oil and watercolour.
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 watercolour. 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 watercolour. 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 watercolour. With component swatches and exact ratios.
Read guideWhat colors make gray: warm, cool and chromatic grays
Real pigment recipes for warm grey, cool grey and chromatic grey in acrylic, oil and watercolour, 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 watercolour.
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 watercolour.
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 greys, and deepen shadows without going dead.
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