Tinting strength: why the same colour needs a different recipe in every brand

Student ranges (Winton, Georgian, most budget sets) use less pigment, more filler and more “hue” substitutes. A Winton Cadmium Yellow Hue is weaker than a Gamblin Cadmium Yellow; a budget “Viridian” may actually be a phthalo and therefore stronger than the real thing. Neither is wrong — but it means a 4 : 2 : 1 recipe written for one box is a different colour in another.

Calibrating the PaintMixLab engine means painting white ladders (paint + 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 parts white) and pair ladders (two chromatic paints against each other) for every tube in a set, then fitting the engine to the painted swatches rather than to the tube colour. Two findings shaped the recipes on this site:

• Lightness in the tube does not predict strength. A bright rose can be a weak tinter and a dark green a very strong one. Recipes that assumed otherwise came out dark and green.
• Painted mixes come out darker than predicted. Consistently enough that the app’s standard engine now adds white to every recipe to land on the predicted value; the original prediction is still available as “Dark Mode”.

That is why every recipe page here lists Winton, Gamblin 1980 and Magicfly separately:

Sage Green Teal Terracotta Navy Blue

1. Put out the weak colour first and add the strong one in dabs.
2. Learn your own box: one afternoon painting white ladders for each tube tells you more than any chart.
3. When you change brand, re-mix your standard colours before you trust an old recipe.
4. Match value with white last, after the hue is right.