Every paint color code, one page.

About this paint color catalog What the codes mean and how the matching works

Paint Color Codes is an independent reference for paint color codes, hex values and cross-brand equivalents. It holds 12,004 colors from 6 manufacturers across the United States and India, sorted into 13 color families. Every color carries the same six values whichever brand it came from: the manufacturer's code, a hex value, RGB, CIE L*a*b*, a Light Reflectance Value and a warm, cool or neutral undertone. Nothing is hidden behind an account, and there is nothing to download.

What a paint color code actually is

A paint color code is the identifier a manufacturer assigns to one exact shade - SW 6244, OC-17, PPG1001-4, 7470. Names repeat and get recycled; the code does not. Within one brand it points at one formula and nothing else, which is what the tinting machine at the counter reads and what you want written down before you repaint a room.

Paint color codes are not universal, and that is the most common misunderstanding about them. No shared registry sits behind them. Each manufacturer numbers its own deck however it likes, and some renumber between collections, so a code from one brand means nothing at another brand's counter. Translating between them is a measurement problem, not a lookup - which is the reason this catalog computes equivalents rather than claiming codes convert.

How to find a paint color from a hex code

Paste the hex into the color search and the whole catalog re-sorts around it. Every color here is converted to CIE L*a*b* and ranked by CIEDE2000 difference from the value you typed, closest first, so the top result is the nearest paint anyone actually sells - not the nearest number. RGB values work too, and the filters still apply, so you can ask for the closest blue, or the closest warm neutral, rather than the closest anything.

Worth saying plainly: a hex code is a screen instruction, not a paint. Two hex values a few points apart can look identical on a wall, and two that look close in a color picker can be obviously different in daylight. The ranking is a shortlist to sample from, not an answer to buy on.

How cross-brand paint matching works here

Open any color and it lists the closest shade in each of the other brands, each with a ΔE00 figure. Under ΔE00 1.0 the two are indistinguishable side by side. One to two is a very close match. Two to four is close but visibly different once it covers a wall, and above four you are looking at the nearest thing that exists rather than a match. That covers the equivalent queries people actually have - a Sherwin-Williams color at Benjamin Moore, a Behr shade in PPG, a Berger shade in Shalimar - without anyone having to eyeball two chips under a shop light.

What a color-difference number cannot tell you is whether the two paints behave the same. Sheen, base, opacity and how the film dries are outside the measurement entirely. The full explanation of ΔE00 and the match bands sets out where the method stops being reliable.

What LRV means, and why it is on every swatch

Light Reflectance Value is the percentage of visible light a painted surface reflects instead of absorbing, on a scale from 0 to 100. It predicts how bright a room will feel far better than the color's name does. It also says nothing about hue: two colors at LRV 45 can be a muddy olive and a clear mid-blue, so it narrows a shortlist rather than picking from it.

Every tile in this catalog shows its LRV, and the search page filters by LRV range - the practical way to answer "something this light, but warmer". The guide on reading LRV when choosing paint covers which ranges suit which rooms, and why LRV 50 is not the middle.

Warm, cool and neutral undertones

An undertone is the bias sitting under a color's main impression: the grey that leans green, the white that leans yellow. It decides whether two colors sit together or fight, and it matters most in the shades that barely look like colors at all. Every color here is labelled warm, cool or neutral from its measured hue and chroma, not from what it is called.

That means the label is consistent across all 6 brands, which a manufacturer's own marketing copy never is. The undertones guide explains how the calculation works, why greige is the hard case, and how to check an undertone yourself before committing.

A shade card you can actually search

Functionally this is a digital shade card - a paint colour chart covering six manufacturers at once, with no PDF to download and no fan deck to order. A printed shade card gives you one brand, a name and a number. Every swatch here also carries its hex code, RGB, LRV, undertone and its nearest equivalents at the other five brands, and the whole thing is searchable by code, by name and by color value.

Browse it by family - white paint colors, gray paint colors, beige paint colors, blue paint colors, green paint colors - or narrow to one manufacturer within a family when you already know whose deck you are buying from.

Which brands are in the catalog

Six manufacturers, every color each one publishes, taken from the palette files the manufacturers release themselves for designers and specifiers. No manufacturer website is scraped.

What this catalog will not do for you

Every swatch on this site is an approximation. The hex values are exact as data - they come from the manufacturers' own published files - but your screen's calibration, its brightness and the light in your room all change what you see. A color that looks right here can look wrong on the wall, and no amount of arithmetic fixes that. Order a sample pot or a peel-and-stick sample and look at it in the actual room, at the times of day you will actually be in it.

This is an independent reference. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any paint manufacturer, and brand names and codes appear only to identify the products they belong to. The terms this site is offered under, and how to report an error, are set out in the terms & conditions.