Benjamin Moore offers consumers a choice of more than 3,500 paint colors. Sherwin-Williams, a competitor, sells a more limited but still substantial palette of 1,500 hues. To buy either brand, you generally have to visit a hardware store or big-box retailer like Lowe’s, select from an array of color chips and wait while the paint is mixed by an employee.

You may have to buy sample cans to test the paint on your walls at home, and make a return trip to the store, before you settle on the right color.

It’s not exactly a soulful task, but for decades it was a manageable one. Or perhaps it wasn’t. Because as with so many consumer categories that have been transformed over the past decade by tech entrepreneurs, from mattresses to eyewear to hailing a cab, paint is being “disrupted.”