No (excellent) paint, no gain

MANILA, Philippines - Nippon Paint introduces its Colour Creations Tinting Machine, which makes choosing a color easy and consistent. In fact, all you need is the color code if you want to replicate it in another house in another city.

Gone are the days of manual mixing by manong, the stresses of hit or miss, and the trouble of replicating — in that last 12 sqm. of unpainted wall — the same color as the rest of the room.

Nippon Paint, Asia’s leading paint manufacturer, this year introduced to the Philippines the Nippon Colour Creations Tinting Machine, available at Wilcon Home Depot and everywhere Nippon Paint is sold.

Nippon Paint Malaysia Group general manager Gladys Goh was here recently to promote and train local partners in using the new color-tinting machine.

It’s not a new technology, she says, and in fact it’s already being used in the 15 countries in Asia where Nippon is distributed, and Nippon Paint has perfected the art of color coating. “Nippon is excellent in paint technology because we are a company that not only does architectural paint, but also car paint. We provide paint for Honda, Toyota, Nissan; we also have paint for auto refinish, for marine and sea vessels. We have different paints for different substrates, so our research and technology have made us advanced and known for producing great quality.”

How does it work? Quickly and easy for both the Nippon technician who mixes the paint and the customer who chooses a color. The customer simply chooses a color from over 2,000 swatches, and the kind of paint she wants (gloss, semi-gloss, matte, etc.), the technician inputs the code into the computer, the machine dispenses the color tints into the base paint, and the paint can is then blended for three minutes in another machine.

There are 13 color tints and the most number a hue will use is about five or six. With the particular color we chose, three color tints were put into the base paint and mixed to produce a honey pastel color.

“The importance of this machine is that if you take this color card home and want to paint your house, say, a mulberry color, you can go to any Nippon Paint outlet and get the same consistent, accurate color for the same price,” says Gladys.

And it’s not just for Metro Manila. “For instance, your mom lives in Cebu and she sees photos of your newly painted house on Facebook, and she says she wants the same color for her house there. You can just give her the paint code and she can get the same color from a Nippon Paint store in a hardware in Cebu.”

The beauty of this machine is that it doesn’t discriminate color against products — whether it’s water-based acrylic (for concrete) or oil-based enamel (for wood and metal). So if your exterior is a mix of all three surfaces and you want the same color, they will have the same exact color.

What Gladys wants to remind people of is to choose the right paint: exterior paint for exterior, and interior paint for interior. Interior paint being cheaper than exterior, some people choose the former even if it’s intended for outdoors.

“We want to educate the market that exterior paint should be used for exterior because it’s formulated to fight against the elements — rain, wind, sun, UV rays, fungus, algae. It’s designed in a way that the pigments can last and withstand all these, so the color doesn’t fade and can last up to 10 years.”

Nippon Paint is made for Asian weather, which is entirely different from the US or Europe obviously. “Heavy rain pours like there’s no tomorrow,” says Gladys. “Then there’s the sun throughout the year and very high humidity. In fact, paint that comes from the US is not very suitable for our tropical climate here. They don’t have rain like our rain.”

On the other hand, interior paint is formulated for a whole set of other things — like if you have children in the house and they tend to write on the walls or you have pets, you need washable paint. “You need paint that can withstand scrubbing without peeling or flaking, one that repels stains. Most importantly, Nippon Paint is a Green Choice — it’s odorless, free from heavy metal, free from formaldehyde and has ultra low VOC.”

How odorless is it really? Can you paint in the afternoon and sleep in the same room that same night?

Gladys says, “You don’t even have to wait, you can be painting the room with someone in it sleeping and they won’t be bothered by the smell. If you have issues with asthma or sinus, it’s the perfect paint to use.”

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To know more about Nippon Paint products visit www.nipponpaint.ph or checkout Wilcon Home Depot and other hardware stores nationwide.