About Swatcher

What Swatcher is, how the matching works, and the questions people ask.

Swatcher is a catalogue of 13,108 real paint colours from 16 brands sold in Ireland, cross-referenced by colour. Every paint has its own page with its hex, RGB, HSL, CMYK and light reflectance values, the closest match from every other brand, and real paints that work alongside it.

It exists because the question decorators, painters and people doing up a room actually ask is "what is this colour in a brand I can get?" Brands publish their own ranges, but nobody publishes the cross-references. Swatcher stores every colour in the same perceptual colour space and does the comparison for you, one closest paint per brand, so a shortlist that started as a Farrow & Ball card can end as a Dulux tin. Every paint's page lists its equivalent in each other brand, and two brands can be compared whole, such as Colourtrend beside Farrow & Ball, from either brand's page.

The whole catalogue is free to browse and search, to match from your camera, to see on your own wall through that camera, and to work out quantities for. An account adds favourites, palettes and projects on top.

To see a colour at the scale of a wall rather than a swatch, the room visualiser puts any paint on the walls and trim of a rendered room, in daylight or by lamplight, and gives you a link that reopens exactly that room. It is a render on a screen, so it is for comparing and shortlisting; a sample pot is still the last word.

Questions

The short answers. Anything missing, ask through the contact page.

What is Swatcher?
Swatcher is a free catalogue of 13,108 paint colours from 16 brands sold in Ireland, cross-referenced by colour. Look up any paint to see its colour values and its closest equivalent in every other brand, compare two brands side by side, match a colour of your own to real paints, and build palettes and projects from paints you can actually buy.
How does Swatcher find the closest match in another brand?
Every colour is stored as CIE L*a*b* coordinates, a colour space designed so that the distance between two points reflects how different they look to the eye. For each brand, Swatcher finds the paint with the smallest difference (delta E, CIEDE2000, the industry formula the paint trade uses for colour tolerances) to the colour you are looking at and shows the nearest paint per brand, closest first. A difference under 1.5 is labelled an excellent match, under 3.5 a good match, and anything further a close alternative.
Can I find the equivalent of a paint colour in another brand?
Yes; that is the heart of Swatcher. Open any paint and its page lists the nearest colour in every other brand, closest first, with how close each one is, so a Farrow & Ball colour has its Colourtrend, Dulux and Fleetwood equivalents on one page. To compare two brands whole, every brand's page links to a side-by-side comparison with each other brand, in both directions: a cross-section of one range beside the closest match from the other.
Is the colour on screen the same as the paint?
No screen is. The hex value for each paint is the colour its brand publishes for it, and every screen, room and finish shifts how a colour reads. Use Swatcher to shortlist and compare, then buy a sample pot before you commit a wall to it.
Where do the colours come from?
From publicly available data on each brand's own website, and each paint links back to the brand's page for it where there is one. When a brand changes a colour, the old version is kept, so a palette or project you saved still shows the colour you saved.
What is LRV?
Light reflectance value: the percentage of visible light a colour reflects, from 0 for pure black to 100 for pure white. It is the quickest way to tell how a colour will behave in a room. Above about 70 it bounces light around and brightens a dark space; below about 40 it absorbs light and wants a room that already gets plenty.
Which brands does Swatcher cover?
Acres Hall, Alchemist, Benjamin Moore, Colourtrend, Crown, Curator, Dulux, Dulux Heritage, Dulux Trade, Farrelly & Co, Farrow & Ball, Fleetwood, Johnstone's, Lick, Little Greene and Ronseal. If a brand you use is missing, tell us through the contact page.
What does it cost?
Browsing, searching and matching the whole catalogue is free, needs no account, and always will be, and so is your first generated palette. A free account keeps that palette, saves as many favourites and palettes as you like, generates up to 10 palettes a month, and gives you your first project whole, with as many rooms as it needs. Swatcher Pro is there for your next project and for more generated palettes, for €29 a year, billed yearly. Cancel from your billing settings whenever you like and keep Pro until the year is up.
How do generated palettes work?
Describe a room or upload a photo, and Swatcher drafts a set of colours for it, then swaps each one for the nearest real paint in the catalogue. You never get a colour you cannot buy. If you already have a paint or two in mind, pick them first and the rest of the palette is built around them. Your first palette needs no account: try it from the home page, and it gets its own page you can share or come back to.
How does capturing a colour with the camera work?
Point your camera at anything and Swatcher averages a small patch around the reticle to steady the reading, then matches it against the catalogue the same way as any other colour. The reading depends on your camera and the light, so treat it as a starting point rather than a measurement.
What does the room visualiser do?
It puts any paint in the catalogue on the walls of a rendered sample room, with a second paint on the skirting, window frame and sill if you want one, seen from the corner or facing the wall, in daylight or by lamplight. The address updates as you change things, so a copied link reopens the same room. It is a 3D render, not a photograph, and it is there to compare colours at the scale of a wall rather than to promise what yours will look like: the paint's finish, your walls and your light all shift a colour, so try a sample pot before you commit.
Who makes Swatcher?
Swatcher is built and run in Ireland by TJ Fogarty, an independent developer. Questions, corrections and missing brands are all welcome through the contact page.

Something wrong, or a brand missing? Get in touch.