Clever indeed – and simple, as most great ideas tend to be. Everyone knows that those sample booklets you get from DIY stores and paint warehouses bare a minimal relation to the actual colour of the paint. The way the real stuff looks, when it’s on, is as much affected by the colour of the walls it is applied to, the material those walls are made of, and so on, as it is by the chemicals in its makeup. Tester paint pots are the only sure way of translating a “might work” from a catalogue into a definite “yes” or “no” on a wall.
A lot of places, both online and off, will supply a reasonable quantity of paint pot testers for free. It’s in their interests to, after all: you check out the tester, you come back and buy the real thing. A tester pot tends, as standard, to come in a 50ml measure – that’s enough to paint a swatch of wall that gives you a reasonable idea as to what the finished article would look like. A word of warning, though: if you use too many in the same room, you’ll have no idea what the thing will look like painted. You can’t get an idea for the feel of a whole painted room if you’ve emptied 18 tester paint pots in close succession: all you can really tell then is that you’ve made a mess of the wall.
Another tip, which you might find useful: not every web site offers free tester pots – and not every site that offers free tester pots is really offering free tester pots. That’s because they tend to require a delivery charge that adds up to a suspiciously high figure – a figure, in fact, that would be just about right for the price of some tester pots plus genuine postage and packing. Tread carefully, or you’ll end up paying a fortune in postage for a lot of “freebies” that are anything but. Your best bet is probably to order your tester paint pots from a tried and trusted source, whatever their cost, rather than being seduced by a site you’ve never heard of, that’s going to sting you hard for a delivery charge. Happy painting!