Ceiling Touch-up Should be Easy

ROOF LEAKS HAPPEN, despite a roofer’s best efforts. For example, due to sun exposure, the daily expansion-and-contraction of our school building’s flat roof will eventually push up its roofing nails. When that happens (if it’s before the routine maintenance work pounds those nails back down again), rainwater can find its way in—around a loosened nail or two.

So it’s not surprising that yellowish water stains will show up on a ceiling occasionally. Unfortunately, although staining is a predictable eventuality, we did not seem to be well prepared for it. Even so, things seemed to have worked out, as this post relates.…

As of the start of last week, there were two ceiling stains in our school building—one in the large office, and one in the corridor just outside the door to the chapel. Both ceilings are white. But there are hundreds of available shades of “white”! In order for the spot repainting to blend in, it seemed best to know which shade had been used for the most recent coat of paint.

Yet our administrator was unable to locate a record of that paint's code. (Not on the invoices; and not in the facility/vendor guide.) I asked the professional painter if he had a record; he checked and answered in the negative. And meanwhile there doesn’t seem to be any ceiling paint in storage.

Both of the ceilings are textured, which means that peeling off a sample (to take to a paint store) did not seem practical. If the texture were damaged, it would be difficult to match its appearance afterward.

Of course, there’s lots of advice online, regarding how to match a paint color. Yet not much seemed to be helpful in our case, even regarding the digital apps.…

https://suggesthow.com/how-to-match-ceiling-paint/

https://www.ehow.com/how_4967091_match-ceiling-paint.html

https://www.hunker.com/12002595/how-to-match-white-paint-on-a-ceiling

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2593290/how-to-match-ceiling-paint

https://www.realtor.com/advice/home-improvement/how-to-match-paint-color-without-a-sample/

Almost every major brand of paint has a free app to help you nail a shade you’ve forgotten the name of. It usually works like this: Take a picture of your existing color and upload it for analysis. The app will identify the hue and find the closest shade in the manufacturer’s palette. A few popular color matching apps for your smartphone are Behr ColorSmart, Benjamin Moore Color Capture, and ColorSnap Visualizer from Sherwin-Williams. Just remember that each app provides matching paint colors for its specific brand only—so here’s to hoping you remember what brand you used to paint your bathroom walls.

Indeed, chances are good that our ceiling paint came from Vista Paint (formerly Naylor Paint) on Lincoln Blvd. And unfortunately they don’t have a color-matching app.

So what to do, given that we don't know the exact existing paint color? As it happens, Ruben (our custodian) and I independently came across this product:

It's a combined paint and primer. The can sprays upward for easy application. Costs around $15. Ruben tried it last week in the office, and he says, “It works great!”

Apparently the white commonly used for ceilings is generic enough that this product could blend in.

Ruben plans to get another can of this stuff soon, in order to cover the stain in the corridor, as well.