Looking for automotive paint? What's the name of a color? Remembering the first car you ever owned? These questions and more can be explored on PaintRef.com. We do not sell paint, but we do try to help you find the paint codes so that you can order them from a paint company like the ones we have links to on the right.

What makes our paint database different than all the rest?

(1) We have a method to easily cross-reference the use of a paint formula on different automobile models, years, and paint manufacturers from the 831,663 paint codes in our database.

(2) We show the model/year paint code as well as the longer GM/Ford/Chrysler manufacturing paint code

(3) Wherever possible we try to use the model/year promotional paint name which comes from sales brochures which we also have available for viewing (39,638 pages and growing).

(4) We show the corresponding codes of all major manufacturers of paint (OEM and touchup paints, we try to avoid alternative or complete repaint options because they don't match well)

(5) We not only show scanned in paint chip pages (55,380 pages, the largest online paint chip collection anywhere! ) but we also link them to the names and codes in in our database (ever try manually searching an online jpg image for a color name? Well, you can do that automatically in our site!)

(6) In many cases we show examples of the paint, even on real cars. If not, check out the Google/Bing/Yahoo image search links for each color listed.

(7) You can also search on generic color shades such as Orange or Red Corvette or 1969 Blue or Chyrsler Green, we even have summary lists which show the use of these color shades on a specific model throughout the years (i.e. Blue Mustang or Orange Camaro or Green Chevy Truck.



Why do we do this? To understand the history of color usage as well as how codes and promotional names for the same paint have changed with time.



For example, did you know that Candy Apple Red was first officially used on a production car by Ford in 1966, but was a bright, non-metallic, red? It was end until 1996, that Chrysler, and GM in 2001, had a similarly named production paint. The highly metallic, Candy Apple Red with multiple layers over a silver base wasn't popular until the 1970's with custom muscle cars using non-production paints. A search of Apple shows that historically the name was associated with a Green going back to the early 1930's. Again, the first Apple Red was in 1966 by Ford followed by GM in 1967.



