Since the advent of latex paint in the early 1950’s, American paint manufacturers and retailers have relied upon “*universal tinting colorants” as their tinting medium. These glycol based colorants are formulated to produce acceptable results with either waterborne or solventborne bases; unfortunately they do not produce optimal results with either family of coatings and might be more accurately described as “compromise colorants”.
The primary advantage of universal colorants is that they enable domestic paint shops to minimize their investment in space and equipment. The disadvantage of the universal tinting approach is that the colorants frequently do not stay in solution, and covering power and color retention are very poor.
Fine Paints of Europe and our independent retailers take pride in our unique “product–specific” tinting system which utilizes two separate color dispensers. Recognizing that oil and water do not mix, the system used by FPE uses solventborne colorants to tint solventborne base paints and waterborne colorants to tint waterborne base paints.
This product specific tinting approach allows FPE to dispense factory quality colorants in greater volume. These colorants represent a much higher percentage of the finished product – this revolutionary but proven approach yields dramatically enhanced color depth and coverage, even with the most difficult colors.
You’ll recognize the advantage of product specific colorants the first time you use our paints.
