The $4.99 Tester vs the $200 Paint Mistake

Every week, someone walks into our store holding a lid from a room they just painted, and the sentence starts the same way: "It looked completely different on the chip." Then we tint new gallons in a new colour, and they go home to paint the same room twice. That second round is what we call the $70 mistake — and $70 is the polite version. The real math of a wrong colour Say you painted a bedroom in Regal Select at $89.99 a gallon on sale. Two gallons: $179.98. The colour reads too cold once the evening light hits, so you're repainting. The second round costs: Two more gallons: $179.98 Fresh roller sleeves, tape, maybe a liner: ~$20 Another full weekend of cutting-in and rolling: your time Around $200 in materials to end up where you meant to start — and that's a single room with mid-priced paint. On an AURA exterior job, a wrong colour costs multiples of that. The gallons we tint are custom-mixed, so they're final sale once prepared. Every paint store works this way; tinted paint can't go back on the shelf. The $4.99 alternative We sell 60 mL colour testers — real Benjamin Moore paint, not a printed approximation — for $4.99 each, currently 3 for $9.99. Testers are available in selected popular Benjamin Moore and Graimondi colours; see us in store for availability. Three testers cover the classic decision: the colour you think you want, one step warmer, one step lighter. For colours outside the tester range, there are other low-cost ways to try before you commit: Benjamin Moore 236 mL sample pots, Colour Squared peel-and-stick samples, and painted boards from our Graimondi Colour Collection you can carry around the room. How to test paint properly (the way we tell customers at the counter) 1. Paint it big. A brush-swipe the size of a playing card tells you nothing. Two coats, at least 2′ × 2′, or paint a foam board you can move around the room. 2. Two coats, always. One coat over an existing colour shows you the old colour bleeding through, not your new colour. 3. Check it at three times of day. Morning light, afternoon sun, and lamps at night. This is where most "it changed on me" stories come from — the colour didn't change, the light did. North-facing rooms in Burlington pull colours cooler; south-facing rooms warm them up. 4. Hold it against what's staying. Your floor, trim, countertop, and sofa vote too. A grey that's perfect in isolation can turn purple next to oak. 5. Live with it for 48 hours. If you still like it after two days of walking past it, buy the gallons. Not sure which colours to even test? That's the step before the tester. Our free rAIflow — Find Your Perfect Neutral tool matches a colour to your actual flooring and cabinets, then shows you coordinated options warmer, cooler, lighter, or darker. Narrow it to two or three candidates online, then test those with $4.99 testers instead of guessing across a whole fan deck. Or skip straight to the counter — bring photos of the room, your flooring, or a cushion. Reading undertones is what we do all day. Between the tool, the testers, and the people behind the counter, there's no reason to ever paint a room twice. Current tester and gallon pricing is always on our Paint Sale Burlington page. Colour Land Paint & Decor, 3505 Upper Middle Rd., Burlington — serving Burlington, Oakville, Milton, Waterdown, and Hamilton.