The development and creation of paint most often happens in a laboratory far away from paint stores and job sites. Chemists and scientists spend hours upon hours formulating the exact right combination of materials to make a paint that performs exactly as they intend. From holding color, to protecting the substrate, to adhering to the surface and not cracking for years on end, formulating a paint that can be utilized in a production environment is a rigorous and detail-oriented process.

In the laboratory, these scientists and engineers count on a number of tools to help them make sure that what they are making can be repeated on a large scale and utilized by professional painters on paint jobs all over the world. And while tools like spectrophotometers, adhesion testers, and gloss meters provide a wealth of information about a paint’s true chemical characteristics, this represents only half of the test equation.

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