This is a shot of my friend Ron's store, Oswego Paint & Home Fashion, in Oswego, IL.

They are remodeling their shop, and as part of the redo they are using lots great colors.

I wanted to share this shot with you because it perfectly illustrates the whole concept of tinted primers.

In today's design market, deep-toned colors are in high demand. We are seeing a lot of clear Reds being specified, for example.

The red pigment is very transparent, and that usually translates to multiple coats (read:5 or more) on the wall to get full coverage. In this image, you can see the painter is actually painting "Mojo" (the clear red) over what looks like a maroon wall. It might seem a bit counter intuitive, but the maroon is actually specifically formulated for "Mojo".

Our Lead-Geeks (whom I love and are a father/son duo named Bob and Rob. Really!) analyze how light waves travel through the topcoat color, hit the primer color and bounce back up. They mathematically calculate the ideal primer color for each topcoat by looking at the light waves. There is a bright yellow in the C2 palette that had an army green primer - who knew? Yet these specially formulated primers allow the painter to almost always be able to count on only using 2 top coats - even for super clear colors like the "Mojo" pictured here.