Although more and more people have started to use base paint to make their own custom colors for both arts and crafts and home decor recently, we constantly see people using their base paint incorrectly. This stems from a lack of information out there on how to correctly use base paint and with us seeing so many questions from the community on how to get the best performance out of their base paint, we have decided to publish a few articles to try and help our readers.
One of the more common questions that we have noticed being asked time and time again is based around if you can use base paint without tint or not so we wanted to focus on this for todays article. Although this may seem like a basic question to some of our more experienced readers, we do have a huge number of beginners that read our content who are just starting out.
Our hope is that we will be able to help any of our readers who are new to using base paint ensure that they are tinting or colouring it correctly prior to use to get the best end results possible. The more common mistakes that we see people making time and time again with base paint tend to be very easy to avoid provided you know what you should actually be avoiding while being able to drastically improve your end results.
What Is Base Paint Used For?
Base paint is not a paint designed for use as a base layer as most people presume. Base paint has been designed to be used as a base for mixing custom paint colors with other paints or tints as needed to get the end result that you desire for your surfaces.
The common misunderstanding of what base paint actually is and how you should be using it is one of the main reasons we see so many beginners making mistakes when using it. There are people on social media and online forums within the painting community still trying to insist that base paint is to be used as a base layer and this is not the case at all.
As base paint is designed to be used as a way to allow you to quickly and easily mix your different tints and colors for optimal results, you can probably gather than you should be using a tint with it. This is true for both arts and crafts and home decoration as the main use case for base paint in both is to make your own custom paint colors as easily as possible.
Can You Use Base Paint Without Tint?
Although you can use base paint without a tint, it defeated the purpose of using base paint as it is supposed to be used with a tint or two or more colors. The formula of base paint has been designed to allow you to quickly, easily, and cheaply add tints or colors to create your own custom colors so not adding a tint defeats the purpose.
Even adding a slight tint to your base paint allows you to dramatically change its normal color but the main use case is to add multiple tints or colors to create something new altogether. Although color mixing can be difficult for beginners, especially if you are using more than two colors, it can allow you to customise your paints heavily.
Thankfully, in this day and age, there are an absolute ton of free tutorials available online going over how you should be going about color matching with a base paint to get the best results possible too. Although we would recommend that you start with two colors until you get used to it, you can quickly progress to three or more once you get the initial concepts nailed down.
How To Tint Your Base Paint!
To tint your base paint correctly, have the colors or tints ready that you want to mix and start by adding small amounts of each in a rough ratio that you think will produce your desired color. Once you get more experience with color matching, you can add larger amounts of paint from the start to get the end result quicker.
In our opinion, if you are a beginner then it is much better to start with smaller amounts of your tinting colors and then build them up as you mix the paint. This allows you to make tweaks easier throughout the mixing process while also avoiding and major problems with adding way too much of one color.
If you are trying to mix three or more colors to your base paint then this approach tends to work best as color matching with three colors in the mix is considerably more difficult than with two colors. The process gets exponentially more difficult from there on with each additional color you add too as it makes keeping the ratios correct more difficult.
Does The Tint Product Matter?
Although there are a number of tints designed for use with base paint on the market, some people will just add paints that they like the color of and start to mix. Both paths are fine and can work but sticking with the tints that have been designed for use with the base paint can workout to be much cheaper than using actual paints.
If you are new to tinting base paint then it is usually better to start with the cheapest possible route due to the learning process usually resulting in a large number of wasted mixes. Although some people do take to color matching and tint mixing quickly allowing them to get excellent results quickly, this does tend to be rare and is far from the norm.
If you have never used a base paint before and are looking to mix your own colors for something like your own home decoration, it may be worth having a professional do your color matching for you. They are more likely to get the ratios correct the first time and although the cost of the professional does hike your costs up, it will often workout to be cheaper than trying to mix the paints yourself and ruining it all then having to rebuy everything.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over the question “can you use base paint without tint?” To an end. We hope that you have found our article helpful and that we have been able to help you avoid the more common mistakes that we see when using base paint. Once you actually understand that base paint is designed to be tinted in some way prior to use rather than used as a base coat when painting, it is much easier to understand how to use the paint correctly without issue.
