Is this Elephant's Breath or the other one?
The customer picked colours from sample pots over two weekends. Their choices came in by text: the lounge walls in one grey, the chimney breast darker, ceilings white, woodwork in a soft white eggshell rather than gloss. Then they changed the bedroom from green to a warm neutral after seeing the sample on the wall. The painter who started on Monday was not on those texts.
By Wednesday, the second bedroom has two coats of the green. The customer is upset, the painter is annoyed, and the owner is paying for another two coats and another day.
Why colour choices go astray
Colour decisions arrive gradually and change often. Customers try samples, live with them, and change their mind, which is reasonable. The problem is that the decorating business has no single place where the current choice for each surface is written down.
- Choices arrive by text, email and in conversation.
- Changes of mind are not recorded against the room.
- Colour names are used without the manufacturer, range or code.
- Sheen and product, such as matt or eggshell, are not specified per surface.
- Painters on site see the quote, not the latest decisions.
What a wrong colour costs
A wall in the wrong colour costs paint and a day's labour to put right, and usually pushes the job, and the next one, back. It also damages the customer's confidence at exactly the point where you want a good review. Wrong sheen, like gloss where they asked for eggshell, is less dramatic but just as noticeable to the customer.
The paint order suffers too. If the office orders from the original choice and the customer changed their mind by text to the painter, the right colour is never ordered, or both are, and the wrong tins end up on a shelf in the unit. And the customer is left wondering what else the business has not been told.
There is also the later cost. Customers who need to touch up a scuffed wall a year later often ring to ask what colour was used. If the only record is a text on a painter's old phone, nobody can tell them, and a small favour turns into a guessing game with sample pots.
The colour schedule we build
- Each job has a schedule listing every room and surface: walls, feature walls, ceilings, woodwork, doors, radiators.
- Each surface records manufacturer, range, colour name and code, sheen and product, chosen from lists so nothing is misspelled.
- The customer receives the schedule by link, checks it and approves it. Their approval is recorded with the date.
- Changes are made on the schedule, not by text. The customer confirms the change, and the painter's view updates, with the change highlighted.
- Painters see the current schedule for today's rooms on their phones, and tick each surface as complete.
- The paint order and the leftovers list are built from the same schedule, so the right colours are ordered and labelled.
| Room | Surface | Recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Lounge | Walls, chimney breast | Code, range, sheen, product |
| Lounge | Ceiling | Code, product |
| Bedroom 2 | Walls | Current choice, with change history |
| Throughout | Woodwork | Colour, sheen, product |
After the next change of mind
When the customer changes the bedroom colour, it is changed on the schedule, they confirm it, and the painter sees it before they open a tin. Nobody paints from memory. The paint order matches. And at the end of the job, the customer has a record of every colour used, which they will want when they need to touch up.
Is this your colour process?
- Colour choices arrive by text and in conversation.
- A painter has used a colour the customer had changed.
- Colour names are recorded without codes.
- Sheen is not specified for each surface.
- Customers ask afterwards which colour went where.