Model Paint Mixer
Work out what two miniature paints produce when you combine them at a chosen ratio, and get a drop-by-drop recipe you can follow at the bench. Pick a base colour from eight named paints or type your own hex code, set the parts, and the page returns the blended value plus the exact number of drops of each component.
A Mixing Bench That Speaks in Drops
This is a blending aid for miniature and scale model painters. Instead of guessing how much of one pot to add to another, you describe the two paints and the proportion, and it returns both a colour value and a practical recipe in drops. The palette is deliberately small: each named paint has one fixed value, which keeps the arithmetic predictable and honest about what the tool can and cannot know.
- Eight named paints are built in. The swatches run White (#ffffff), Black (#000000), Red (#ff0000), Blue (#0000ff), Yellow (#ffff00), Green (#008000), Brown (#8b4513) and Grey (#808080).
- A ninth option, Custom (hex), lets you paste the code a paint range publishes for a specific pot when it is not one of the eight.
- The ratio works as parts, not percentages. Entering 3 and 1 means three parts of the first colour to one part of the second, and the label under the result spells that split out.
- Thinner is a separate control with five settings: None, 10 percent light thin, 25 percent medium thin, 50 percent glaze and 75 percent wash. It reduces the paint drops but keeps the colour ratio unchanged.
- Output volume sets the size of the batch in drops, so the same recipe can be scaled from a single test mix up to a full pot.
Mixing a Batch at the Bench
- Choose the dominant colour in the Base color selector. Because the ratio is read as its share of the mixture, whichever paint you intend to use most of belongs here.
- Choose the paint you are adding in the Mix color selector, or switch either selector to Custom and type a hex code such as #2d5a8c.
- Set Base ratio and Mix ratio. The page recalculates on every keystroke, so the result updates as soon as you finish typing.
- Pick a Thinner setting if you want the mix thinned for glazing or washing, then set the output volume in drops. Ten drops is the starting value.
- Read the two circles at the top of the result, which show each parent colour, followed by a third circle for the blend and the hexadecimal value underneath.
- Note the drop counts for base, mix and thinner before you leave. The page does not save anything, so a reload returns you to the defaults.
The Default Mix, Step by Step
The page loads with White as the base, Blue as the mix, a ratio of three to one, no thinner and a ten-drop batch. That combination is worth walking through because it shows how every part of the output is produced.
- The two parents are #ffffff and #0000ff. The tool averages each channel by weight, so red becomes (255 times 3 plus 0 times 1) divided by 4, which is 191.25. Green lands on the same value, and blue becomes (255 times 3 plus 255 times 1) divided by 4, which is the full 255.
- Rounding those channels gives #bfbfff, a pale periwinkle. That is the value shown under the third circle, and it is the whole arithmetic of the tool in one line.
- The recipe reads eight drops of base and three drops of mix for a ten-drop batch. Those come from rounding 10 times three quarters and 10 times one quarter, so the two parts together make eleven drops rather than ten — a rounding artefact worth knowing when the batch is very small.
- Because the default thinner setting is None, no thinner line appears. Switching to 50 percent glaze would halve both paint drops and add five drops of thinner, without changing the colour value at all.
- Set the thinner to 75 percent wash instead and the colour stays #bfbfff while the recipe becomes two drops of base, one drop of mix and eight drops of thinner — a mix that behaves very differently on the model despite reading as the same shade.
Three Ways to Choose a Miniature Colour
| Alternative | Notes |
|---|
| Mixing two paints by hand | The slowest but most flexible route, and the one this page supports. It lets you match a shade exactly and adjust it pot by pot. The cost is repeatability: unless you record the drops, a colour mixed freehand is hard to reproduce for a second unit in the same army. |
| Buying the shade ready-made | Most paint ranges publish a huge catalogue, and for common tones a straight purchase beats mixing on consistency. The trade-off is cost and the fact that you can only own so many pots; mixing earns its keep mainly for the in-between tones a range does not sell. |
| Mixing on a wet palette | Rather than combining pots, you can lay two colours side by side and pull them together on a wet palette, blending on the model with thin layers. This gives smoother transitions than a single combined colour and is the usual approach for gradients and glazing. |
| Relying on a colour wheel or chart | A printed wheel gives the direction of a shift but not an exact value, and it is built on pigment behaviour. This page gives an exact screen value but from an additive model, so the two disagree in different ways. Use the wheel for direction and this page for recording a repeatable ratio. |
Why the Screen Colour Is Not a Paint Prediction
The one thing to understand before trusting the number is that the blend is arithmetic on screen values, and physical paint does not obey the same arithmetic. This is a property of the method rather than a fault, and the page itself carries a short reminder to test on a palette.
- The blend averages the red, green and blue channels arithmetically. Screen colour works additively, so combining two colours that way keeps the brightness of both. Paint is subtractive: each pigment absorbs part of the light and reflects the rest, so mixing two pigments removes wavelengths from both and the result usually reads darker and duller than the preview.
- Named pigments are not pure. A model red is rarely a clean #ff0000, so the eight built-in values are convenient stand-ins rather than accurate measurements of any particular pot. This is exactly why the Custom hex option exists.
- Metallic, wash and contrast-style paints behave structurally rather than as tints. Metallic pigments are suspended particles, and thinning them also thins the metallic effect, so a screen average cannot represent them.
- Once mixed, a pot shifts as solvent evaporates and the paint cures. A mix that looks right in the well can dry a shade deeper on the model, more so with very thin glazes.
- The practical use of the page is therefore to record and compare combinations — three parts to one is a warmer grey than four parts to one — and to fix a repeatable recipe, not to promise a colour the pot must match. Mix a small test batch on a palette card and let it dry before committing to a whole pot.
Mixing Questions from the Paint Desk
Why do my eight base and three mix drops add up to eleven instead of ten?
Because each drop count is rounded separately. Ten drops at a three-to-one ratio is 7.5 and 2.5, and rounding both halves up gives eight and three. At larger batch sizes the discrepancy disappears into the total, so this only matters for very small test mixes. Raise the output volume to fifty drops and the split becomes 38 and 13, which adds to 51 — still one over, but a smaller error in relative terms.
Does adding thinner change the colour value?
No. The hex value depends only on the two colours and their ratio, so thinning a mix leaves the blend unchanged on screen. What thinner changes is the recipe: it removes paint drops and adds thinner drops in their place. Going from None to 75 percent wash on the default mix keeps #bfbfff but turns eight and three paint drops into two and one, with eight drops of thinner.
Can I enter a paint code from my own range?
Yes. Set either selector to Custom (hex) and type the six-digit value, and the box below that selector supplies it to the calculation. This is the intended way to use the tool for real pots, since the eight named colours are fixed approximations rather than readings of any specific product.
Is anything I type stored or uploaded?
No. All of the blending runs inside the page as plain arithmetic on the values in the boxes, and the current selections exist only while the tab is open. Reloading resets to white, blue, three to one. There is no upload step and nothing is written to your device by the calculator.
Last verified: October 3, 2026
Launch Model Paint Mixer
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Maintained by Huang Bin · Last updated October 3, 2026