My Barbie Pink Colour Mixing Hell (Dulux)

Member Name: zusy

Product:	Dulux
Date:	13/11/00 (3960 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Huge range of colours, easily available

Disadvantages: The machines can go wrong, the colours vary enourmously!

I think I screamed. Perhaps I passed out. One thing was certain, however; there was no way in Hell I was having bright pink walls.

We’d been looking for The Perfect Dark Red Paint, a search that became the modern equivalent to the quest for the Holy Grail. This sample pot would be too brownish, that one too mauve. This colour was no longer in stock, that one was too expensive. We thought several times about jacking the whole thing in and opting for magnolia, but somehow the spirit of Lawrence Lewellyn Bowen hovered before us and admonished us for such blasphemy against interior design.

Finally we came back to the church of Dulux, hoping for a blessing from the Gods of Paint. We clutched the colour charts, fanned out before us in the manner of geisha girls, and pontificated with the young man (who looked about 13 years old, but surely had to be older) who was to mix the paint for us. Were the colours on the swatches accurate, we wanted to know. Could we have a sample pot to see if we liked it before splashing out (excuse the pun) on a larger pot?

Mr. Dulux-mixing man assured us that the swatches had been chosen for their accuracy, and that, as far as he was aware (we’ll come back to this statement), Dulux colour mixing had no sample pots. A look passed between the boyfriend and I that said ‘Let’s just get the bloody pot and have done with it.’ And so this is what we did.

Mr. Dulux-mixing man (well, boy) began the process of tapping codes into the computer to see what quantities of colours he’d need to make the one we wanted. There was a sharp intake of breath from my boyfriend as he spotted a pot of colour being poured into the mixture that resembled something Barbie would use to paint her plastic mansion.

“It probably looks really different when it’s all mixed up” I laughed nervously.

That laugh would echo cruelly in my head when we saw the final concoction.


Having placed the can in the mixing machine, we waited a few minutes whilst it was furiously shaken, and held our breath as mixer-boy prised the lid off.

It was bright pink.

Not just a pinkish red, but BRIGHT eighties-lipstick pink. The kind of pink that turns adult men to weeping children on Changing Rooms. The kind of pink that results in lawsuits.

“Oh don’t worry” the boy said, noticing our shocked reaction; “It looks really different when it’s dry.” We wondered how this monstrosity would suddenly dry to the lovely dark red/maroon we lusted after, but after several reassurances and the promise we could bring it back for a refund if we weren’t happy, we decided to give it a go.

Having lugged the paint home, we slapped a bit on the wall straight away, ignoring the gagging reaction we experienced and thinking we would wake up to the colour of our dreams. What actually happened was this:

The boyfriend crept out of bed to make coffee and looked in on the living room wall we had daubed the day before. I was just starting to wake up and heard him cry “Oh my god, no!” Call me intuitive, but somehow I knew it was still pink.

It had dried the exact same colour as in the can. If anyone is after a horrible bright pink paint, I highly recommend this shade (Moroccan Velvet, if you’re interested) – you wont be disappointed.

We put another coat over the patch we’d already painted, waited a few hours and found it was still bright pink. We held lights up to it, we looked at it from every angle, we held the original swatch up to it – there was no denying, it was still bright pink.

With heavy hearts we marched back to the shop and explained our problem. The mixer-boy looked slightly incredulous. “We don’t usually get complaints,” he said. Making tutting sounds, he sploshed a bit of our paint onto a paper tow
el and went to dry it under the hand-dryer in the gent’s toilets (!) He came back about ten minutes later clutching a paper towel that was now bright pink. He said it looked perfect to him.

Nevertheless, we wanted a refund, and eventually got it. He told us to wait by the machine whilst he sorted it out for us. I followed him to the refund desk, unbeknownst to him, and heard him say to the woman at the desk: “Yeah, it’s another Dulux refund. There’s no way this is the right colour, we’ll have to stop selling this one until we can work out what went wrong.” This was from the very same lips that had told us there were no complaints and the colour was fine!

Meanwhile, the boyfriend had been standing by the mixing machine and staring at the orphaned pots of Dulux colour-mixed paints that people had obviously brought back. We hadn’t noticed them before. An array of weird colours leaked over the sides of the knockdown price stickers. No complaints, indeed!

The mixer-boy had originally told us he ‘wasn’t aware’ there were any sample pots available. We have to assume that he was hardly aware of his own head, as they do exist. It turned out that they didn’t happen to have any sample-sized tins in stock (we learned from the lady at the refunds desk).

You may have thought that we would never want to repeat the performance, but we decided to give Dulux another go. I’d spotted an apparently lovely colour called ‘Firecracker’ that was darker than we’d originally wanted, but we thought might be a better option. This time we got it from another store and managed to get the sample pot size first. It turned out to be the perfect colour and we are really happy with it. I think we might have been very lucky, though, as when we went back to buy the full-sized pots, three people ahead of us in the queue were bringing their pots back for refunds.

“Y
eah, we have been having a lot of trouble with the machines.” This mixing-man admitted. Hardly the ‘accurate colours/no complaints’ company line…

So… my advice to you, if you’re thinking about getting some paint mixed by Dulux:

Go for a slightly darker colour than you want, they seem to turn out about 2-3 shades lighter when mixed.

Look at the other colours on the swatch chart (particularly if going for dark colours) – are they the same base colour? The other colours on the Moroccan Velvet swatch were indeed bright to light pink.

Get a sample pot! Its much less hassle than paying a lot for a full-sized one and having to bring it back. My boyfriend noticed that people had brought sample pots back, too for refunds, so you don’t have to be stuck with it if it’s very different to the colour you expected.

Get several sample pots based around the colour you want, so you have a better chance of finding the right one. It seems to be a lottery, really!

If the colour mixed is completely different to how it should be, try going to a different store – it seems the machines do get it wrong sometimes. They are fully aware of this, even if they wont admit it.

Good luck!

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