About Paint Picker

Who's behind this

Founder & Software Engineer

Hi, I'm Michael McGettrick - a UK-based software engineer and tabletop hobbyist. I built every part of Paint Picker myself: the cross-brand paint database (35+ ranges, thousands of colours), the CIEDE2000 perceptual matching engine, the scheme generator, and the AWS infrastructure it all runs on.

I'm a massed-infantry player at heart. My main army is Astra Militarum - rank upon rank of Guardsmen is my idea of a good evening - alongside Genestealer Cults, Tyranids and Space Marines. I also picked up a force of Imperial Agents purely because I fell for the look of the Arbites. Painting hordes means I care a lot about fast, repeatable schemes and pulling the same colour out of whatever range I can actually get hold of - which is exactly the problem this site solves.

Every recipe and conversion here is generated by perceptual colour matching and checked against real ranges - written from the bench of someone who actually paints these armies, not lifted from a brand's marketing.

The team

• David Ross

  Digital Marketing Consultant

• Jonathan Rock

  Senior Technical Consultant

What is Paint Picker?

Paint Picker started as a single tool: find a miniature paint colour, or its equivalent in another brand, without squinting at pots or Googling "Citadel equivalent of Vallejo…" for the hundredth time. It has since grown into a broader, free resource for anyone painting Warhammer, D&D minis or any other tabletop models.

Everything here is built around one idea: take the colour you actually want and turn it into something you can paint with - exact cross-brand matches, full schemes, and the guides to use them.

What you'll find here

• •Paint matcher - match by hex, paint name, or a colour picked from an image, across 35+ ranges.
• •Scheme generator - a full painting scheme for any faction or colour: armour ramp, metals, skin, leather, lenses, basing and faction accents.
• •Faction painting guides - signature colours and step-by-step recipes for every 40k and Age of Sigmar army.
• •Technique & buyer guides - washes, edge highlighting, basing, plus honest "best paint/brush" buying advice.
• •Cross-brand paint charts and a matcher - whole catalogues with side-by-side equivalents.
• •Store stock directory - independent shops worldwide, what each one actually stocks and its typical discount, judged shop by shop.
• •Embeddable widgets - our paint matcher and colour picker, free to drop into your own site.
• •A backlog tracker and paint inventory - sign in to track what you own and what a recipe still needs.

Paint brands

We cover 35+ paint ranges, including Citadel (Base, Layer, Shade, Contrast and more), Vallejo (Model, Game and Air), The Army Painter, Scale75, Colourforge, P3, Reaper and many more.

Want a range added? Let us know via our Contact page.

How the matching works

Colours on screen are hex values; real paint looks different depending on your monitor, lighting, the number of coats and what you paint over. We give you the closest digital match, but always recommend testing paints in person when precision matters.

Our recipes and converters rank paints by perceptual colour difference (CIEDE2000 in CIELAB space) rather than raw RGB distance, so matches line up with how the human eye actually sees colour.

How it stays free

Paint Picker started as one painter's fix for a problem that kept coming up, and it's free to use. We keep it that way with a few affiliate links and no display advertising. If it's saved you time, consider supporting us.

Are you a brand, retailer or creator? See our Partnerships page.