Patent ID: 8743364

Claim:
A method for matching color and appearance of a target coating on a substrate, said method comprising the steps of; a) providing a set of coating chips each having a chip coating layer thereon and a coarseness value and a lightness value corresponding to coarseness and lightness of said chip coating layer, said set of coating chips comprise at least two coating chips having different lightness values, and at least two coating chips having matching lightness values and different coarseness values; b) obtaining target color data of said target coating and producing a target lightness value based on said target color data; c) obtaining a target coarseness value of said target coating by a coarseness determination process comprising the steps of: i) selecting from said coating chips one or more preliminary matching chips having lightness values that match the target lightness value, ii) selecting from said preliminary matching chips one or more matching chips by comparing chip coating layers of said preliminary matching chips with the target coating, and iii) producing said target coarseness value based on coarseness values of the matching chips; and d) retrieving one or more preliminary matching formulas from a formula database based on the target color data and the target coarseness value, said formula database comprises coating formulas associated with color data, coarseness values, and lightness values, wherein said target color data or said target lightness value comprise measurement data produced from a color measuring device, wherein said color measuring device is a colorimeter, a spectrophotometer or a goniospectrophotometer.