Overview
Introduction
This tool simulates mixing physical paint colors using a multiply blend, entirely in your browser.
Unlike simple RGB averaging, multiplying channels mimics how real pigments absorb and subtract light when combined, giving noticeably more realistic paint-mixing results.
What Is Paint Colors Simulator?
A pure color-math tool that converts each input hex color to RGB, normalizes each channel to a 0-1 fraction, and multiplies those fractions together across all input colors.
The multiplied result is scaled back to 0-255 and returned as a hex code, alongside a small solid-color swatch image.
How Paint Colors Simulator Works
Each color's red, green, and blue bytes are divided by 255 to get a fraction between 0 and 1. Those fractions are multiplied together across every input color, channel by channel, starting from a fraction of 1.0 for each.
The final multiplied fractions are scaled back up to the 0-255 byte range, rounded, and formatted as a hex code and a preview swatch.
When To Use Paint Colors Simulator
Use it whenever you want a realistic preview of what mixing two or more physical paint colors would look like, rather than a flat light-based average.
It's useful for illustrators, painters, or anyone previewing a physical-media color mix digitally before committing paint to canvas.
Often used alongside Color Mixer, Color Blender and Color Sorter.
Features
Advantages
- Produces noticeably more realistic paint-like results than simple RGB averaging, especially for complementary color pairs.
- Works with any number of colors, mixed in sequence.
- Runs entirely client-side; nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
Limitations
- This is a multiply-blend approximation, not a true Kubelka-Munk pigment-mixing model, so it won't perfectly replicate every real paint's mixing behavior (especially opaque or metallic pigments).
- Multiplying many colors together tends to converge toward black, similar to how mixing too many real paints often produces mud.
Examples
Best Practices & Notes
Best Practices
- Mix only two or three colors at a time for the most predictable, paint-like results — many colors multiplied together quickly converge toward black.
- Compare against the Color Mixer's averaged result on the same inputs to see the difference between additive and subtractive mixing models.
Developer Notes
The multiply-blend loop is a pure function with no DOM dependency, tracking a running fraction per channel starting at 1.0 and multiplying in each input color's normalized channel value in turn; the swatch reuses the shared createPixelBuffer helper.
Paint Colors Simulator Use Cases
- Previewing how mixing two physical paint colors would look before mixing them for real
- Generating darker, more saturated color blends than simple averaging provides
- Teaching or demonstrating the difference between additive and subtractive color mixing
Common Mistakes
- Mixing many colors at once and being surprised the result trends toward black — that's expected with multiply-based subtractive mixing.
- Expecting this to exactly replicate a specific real paint brand's mixing behavior; it's a general-purpose approximation.
Tips
- Try the same two colors in both this tool and the Color Mixer to see the additive-vs-subtractive difference directly.
- Mix with white to lighten a result while keeping its hue, the same way adding white paint works.