Touch-up paint: pens, bottles, aerosols and how much you need

Choosing the right touch-up format for chips and scratches, and how to get a good match.

Touch-up paint is mixed from the same code as the factory finish, but how well a repair looks depends as much on the format and the preparation as on the colour.

Which format

• Pen or brush bottle for stone chips and short scratches. Small, cheap, easy to control.
• Aerosol for scuffs and areas larger than a coin, ideally on a removable part such as a mirror cap or bumper corner.
• Spray-gun paint (by the litre) for panels. This is body-shop work.

Metallic, pearl and matte finishes

Almost all modern cars use a basecoat plus clear coat. Metallic and pearl colours need the clear coat to get their depth, and pearl (tri-coat) colours add a translucent mid-coat between the two. Matte finishes need a matte clear; a gloss clear will leave a shiny patch.

Getting a good match

1. Order by the code and the make and year; some codes have several variants.
2. Spray or brush a test card first and hold it next to the car in daylight.
3. Older paint fades; a slightly lighter or darker variant may match better than the original formula.
4. Clean, degrease and, for deeper chips, prime bare metal before the colour.

Colours on screen, including the swatches on this site, are approximations.