How To Mix Paint Colors - Color Mixing Tutorial - Tints, Tones, Shades

Country Chic Paint
by Country Chic Paint
Easy
Are you looking for a specific color that doesn't quite match anything from our line? Why not play around with mixing your own colors!
In this tutorial we'll show you how to mix tints, shades, tones, and colors. If you'd rather watch a video, we also have a video tutorial available towards the bottom of this post!
Mixing Tints
Mixing Tints


Let’s start with mixing Tints. A tint is basically a lighter version of a color; tints are also called pastels. We can mix a tint by adding Simplicity to the base color. Simplicity is our pure white color. Say, for example, you are looking for a nice light apple green. You’ll start with some Simplicity and add a bit of Luscious Lime. Can you see what a pretty light green color this is?


The best way to create a tint is to start with Simplicity and add a bit of color to it. If you start with the color, you might need to add a lot of the Simplicity to get the tint that you are looking for.
Mixing Shades
Mixing Shades


Now, let’s say you wanted to create a darker shade of a color, you can achieve that by adding a bit of Liquorice to the color of your choice.


Let’s start with some Cranberry Sauce, one of our limited edition colors, and add just a tad of Liquorice to it. As you can see here, we’ve create a beautiful wine red color by mixing Cranberry Sauce and Liquorice together. The color mix we used was 8 parts of Cranberry Sauce with 1 part of Liquorice.


When mixing shades, you’ll want to be careful not to add too much Liquorice, just start with a little at a time.
Mixing Tones
Mixing Tones


Usually we are attracted to colors that are a bit toned down, as they seem more sophisticated than bright colors. If you have a Country Chic color you’d like to tone down, you can use a bit of Hurricane, or a mixture of Liquorice and Simplicity.


If you take our pretty, bright turquoise, Tropical Cocktail and add a drop of Hurricane you'll see a big difference! We can achieve a similar tone by adding Liquorice and Simplicity instead of Hurricane.


You can, of course add a bit more of the white Simplicity to lighten it up, if it’s too dark for your liking.
Mixing Colors
Mixing Colors


We can do more with color mixing than creating tints, shades and tones of a color. We can also mix 2 colors together to create a new hue. We've shown a few examples here, but the possibilities are endless so we recommend you play around with this and create some unique colors yourself!


To make a pretty mint color, try mixing Tropical Cocktail and Luscious Lime, then add Simplicity until you like the tint.
Mixing Colors
If you’d like to mix a pretty lilac color, we suggest using Cranberry Sauce, Midnight Sky, and Simplicity in a mix of 1 part Cranberry Sauce, 1 part Midnight Sky, and 4 parts Simplicity.


We definitely encourage you to play around with blending our colors. There are endless possibilities!
Watch this video to see our company co-founder, Rosanne mixing some beautiful colors first hand!
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
  1 question
  • Steph Steph on Jul 24, 2018

    can this be done with paints from Benjamin Moore, Caspar etc?

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