The most beautiful blue of blues

June 1, 2012 11:44 AM

Yves Klein blue paint dupe?

Hi there! I'm in love with Yves Klein blue (International Klein Blue) and I know that I can get the pigments for the color through ktColors, but I want paint in this color, not pigments. I would like to paint a desk this color and live in the States (Midwest) so it would be nice if you could recommend paint shops I can actually find here.

So can anyone recommend where to find paint in this color? Or a mixture of paints that make this color?

And while we are at it.. how about clothes dye in this color? (oo can you imagine the possibilities?!)

posted by xicana63 to home & garden (8 answers total)

No idea about paint or dye, but how about nail polish? Rescue Beauty Lounge had a limited-edition IKB polish recently. It's sold out, but Revlon Royal is a very close match.
posted by Metroid Baby at 11:54 AM on June 1, 2012

A cursory search seems to point to Pantone 286 (mixed with some Reflex blue; no idea on the ratio, though) being a pretty good match. You can order Pantone paints through their website or get a swatch and find something that matches at your local home store.
posted by bcwinters at 12:05 PM on June 1, 2012

Any decent paint store should be able to match a sample of the color you bring to them. I'd suggest Benjamin Moore, and use their Aura paints, whose colors are the most vibrant I've ever seen in US paints.
posted by xingcat at 12:11 PM on June 1, 2012

You can mix your own paint from the pigment with paint mediums.

Any decent paint store should be able to match a sample of the color you bring to them.

Not in practice. It's possible you can get something passable, but part of the point of Klein's whole blue pigment thing is that it's the only way to get that color. Pigments don't interact the way light does. There are definitely paint colors that can't be mixed, which is why so many of the old masters were cloak-and-dagger alchemists engaged in arms races to achieve colors that no one else had.
posted by cmoj at 12:15 PM on June 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

It is a blue with red in it, hence a purplish blue. Ultramarine blue is very close. Even within color names there is considerable variation, so check out several brands. When you look for a match, observe samples in daylight. Colors that match in daylight (full spectrum) will match in any other light.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:30 PM on June 1, 2012

I did a quick search and read that Benjamin Moore's Blue Suede Shoe is a close match.

ColorCharts.org is a cool site. If you can enter just about any manufacturer's paint swatch name and find close matches. Here are the matches for Blue Suede Shoe.
posted by Fairchild at 12:33 PM on June 1, 2012

That should read Benjamin Moore Blue Suede Shoes
posted by Fairchild at 12:34 PM on June 1, 2012

For a textile dye, what you want is a single-color unmixed dye that is very close to that hue without having to have other dye molecules mixed with it, possibly dulling it down, in order to get the correct hue. Avoid low-quality "all-purpose" dyes like Rit or Tintex; for the best color, dye mercerized cotton or rayon with a good fiber reactive dye, or silk with either fiber reactive dye or acid dye.

The best readily-available fiber reactive dye for this brilliant royal blue color is generically named Colour Index Reactive Blue 19. It is a Remazol dye, available online from dye suppliers including PRO Chemical & Dye (among their Liquid Reactive Dyes), Jacquard Products (among their Vinyl Sulphon brand dyes), Kraftkolour, and others; Dharma Trading Company sells the Jacquard Products version. Here's a link with a picture of a blouse I dyed with a combination of this royal blue and turquoise; you can see that the parts of the blouse that are blue, not turquoise, are rather close to International Klein Blue.

For an acid dye in this color, for dyeing silk, wool, or nylon, I'd try the eye-poppingly bright Coomassie Blue, which is Colour Index Acid Blue 90. You can buy it from PRO Chemical & Dye under the name PRO WashFast Acid Dye 490 Brilliant Blue. Find a good recipe for the dye type and fiber type you choose to dye, and follow it closely, in order to obtain the best color.
posted by Ery at 7:34 AM on June 4, 2012