All things being equal and the car is ready for paint being wheeled into the paint booth is there a color that is the "Cheapest" to paint.
I know reds due to pigment costs can be quite high. Are there other colors considered "cheap?"
Are solids cheaper than metallic?
A question about material costs rather than the actual labor.

Well I paid 2700 for the base clear in paint code NZ for my 68 charger, and that did not include primer...PPG clear and 5 star paint. Tim

What color is NZ in english?

In my dealings and conversations with a person in the business, it can be hard to classify cost by generic colors.
The high cost toners I have had to buy were certain reds, bright yellows, and bright greens.
But that doesn't mean the paint formula for a red, yellow, or green that YOU select will be high.

When you get into flakes and pearls, the game changes dramatically, but that's a different story.

I have found within a line or brand of paints, color can vary the price a bit but by far and large, brand and type (base/clear vs single stage) make an astronomically larger difference. In the limited selection of paints I have dealt with I have seen as much as a 30% difference in price based on color.

68 Newport..almost 20 feet long..
MM1 Turbine Bronze Metallic

Up here in Ontario,Canada we are forced to use water borne base clear.
Chromaxpro by axalta,8700s clear.Better known as DUPONT
Had to open a second gallon each of base and clear to finish the car.
1.58 gallons of paint and ended up using both two full gallons of clear!
Cost? 4,000.00 Canadian Dollars for paint and clear alone!!

If you want CHEAP go with Tremclad or some other Home Depot type furniture paint or pay the price and get REAL paint

I bit the bullet and happy that I did.
I know I would not have been happy with a cheap paint job.
Remember the "paint job on a budget" thread many years ago here??
The guy DID use Tremclad on his General Lee clone

I had a $2,400 dollar bill for my Challenger back in 2006. Just for material.

The thing that gets me a fommer body shop owner is that most of the time we lose money on paint and materials.

For those that want decent quality paint use summit brand paint.

117.91 with free shipping over 100.00. Includes, 1 Gallon Urethane single stage Paint, gloss black, 1 qt. Activator, 1 qt. Reducer.

https://www.summitracing.com/search/department/paints-finishing/section/paints-coatings-dyes-markers?SortBy=Default&SortOrder=Ascending&N=4294951818%2B400304%2B4294951817%2B4294951819%2B4294796701%2B4294805233%2B4294909931


Other colors are close to same price.
A gallon of summit Urethane clear is 62.97.
You can't paint cheaper than that.


I like the Transtar Euro Classic Clearcoat #7021. About 150.00 a gallon.
I painted a friends 67 cougar in 2004 that still looks like the day I painted it, with that transtar clear and a cheap Omni basecoat. Color was Chrysler crossfire white.

The cheapest quality paint I know of would be. https://www.southernpolyurethanes.com/pricing

Many people use their epoxy and clear, and mix it with other makers bases, because SPI themselves only do very basic colors. But it you wanted to do just red, black, orange or white you could use their whole system.

2.5k for material back in '93...

You get what you pay fer...

So how can Maaco and other 'quick spray' shops get away with charging only a few hundred dollars to paint a whole car (labor + materials)? How much are they paying for their paint and what brand do they use??

Back in the 1990's I used to prep my own cars and bring them to Maaco. The 'commercial rate' at the time was $165.00 per car!

Maaco's purchasing power for paint is pretty darn high. Sure, they don't buy top notch paint, but they can probably paint a car for $25 in paint costs.

I worked in purchasing at Kenworth for many years. We used DuPont IMRON paint. A Very expensive paint. When you buy it it 330 gallon totes, and MILLIONS of dollars a year in business (over 50 million annually) you are able to negotiate very good supply contracts.

There were times we had to source small quantities of tonor (color tint) locally from auto paint supply dealers (cause someone didn't do their job correctly). We might pay $1000 for a gallon of something....then when you look at what are cost per gallon for that same item through our normal supply channel it was usually something like $60.

I would make sure the person responsible for us having so source outside of our contract understood that!

There is MASSIVE amounts of profit in the paint we buy at the hobbiest level!!! Hell, even the small body shops pay a lot.

I have been using Nason paint and it seems to be pretty good stuff. I have used a lot of their primers so far and some single stage on small parts. Im still debating on if I want to shoot the whole car or just pay someone to do it.
I have done a lot of research on Nason and most complaints seem to be coverage. When you buy cheaper paints it does not cover as well so in the end you use more paint. So how much are you actually saving?

I was pretty happy with the Sikens product. We used the Wanda series which turned out to be fairly inexpensive as auto paints go. The Nason single stage paints are good to.

Here in Manitoba, a private citizen can buy whatever paint he wants. A passenger vehicle auto body ship is limited by VOC to the waterborne stuff. Commercial vehicle auto body shops are not as restricted. I was able to buy what I wanted from the autobody supply store and bring it to him. He just said he was not allowed to buy it himself and have it on his books but if I bring it to him and there's no records, well... I bought some PPG Omni Uno HD (his suggestion) from the autobody supply store and brought it to him and he sprayed it. I also bought some of the cheap tcp global stuff and he sprayed it too. I did 3 vehicles and didn't spend anywhere near 4k in parts and labor for all 3 combined.

The '71 Charger was painted in DuPont ChromaBase and ChromaClear back around 1989 and it has held up really good, but the yellow base is fairly translucent so it took several coats for coverage. The black stripes and hood paint covered really well. I don't recall the materials cost, but it was not cheap, I think around $2,000 materials cost way back then?

Just an example of "mark up" at the consumer/hobbyist level, I'm on the "inside" of paint purchase, basically "jobber" level, I was curious one day to see just how much "mark up" there is in paint/paint products, I did several product run downs on cost, just an example: Dupont Vari-Prime etchant, a very good product, widely used in the industry/hobbiest level, the "avg" cost to John Q Public (in my area)is approx $140 a gallon retail, jobber rate is $90, the paint shop's actual cost is $75, the warehouse/distributors cost is $35 from the mfg...