Painting the Red Cross Red
By Traci O'Dea

In March of this year, BVI Red Cross Office Manager and Disaster Coordinator Deniese Gardener, along with her staff, painted the wall in front of the Red Cross building a shade of maroon which is not the standard hue for international organization. “After we started painting,” she said, “we realized that it wasn’t the right red, but we had already purchased the paint, so we just used the paint we had.”

This fall, Rodney Skelton drove by the building and noticed the strange colour then asked Ms. Gardener if King Solomon’s Ashlar Lodge could help out by repainting the building the bright scarlet shade typically associated with the Red Cross. “It sounded like a good idea,” she said.

Caribbean Colours agreed to donate the paint for the project. To ensure that the colour matches the Red Cross brand standards, they employed their new colour match paint technology.

“We’ve got the true Red Cross colour from their letterhead,” Scott Bryson of Caribbean Colours said. He put the logo under the MatchRite iVue reader which can scan an area as small as six millimetres. After scanning the image, the MatchRite system then “talks to UltraBlend, the tinting machine which processes it, and the tinting machine spits out the right colour,” Scott said, laughing at his layman’s explanation. He then used the California Paints e-Visualizer to show what the building would look like with the maroon parts painted the same colour as the logo.

The not-so Red Cross. Photo by Traci O'Dea

At the Caribbean Colours storefront in Fish Bay, Eldred Williams showed me a dark green swatch of roofing that a client had brought in. Taped to it was a scrap of paper painted with the colour that the machine had recommended. The two shades were identical. This technology is a huge benefit in the BVI where sun exposure can fade or alter interior and exterior paints, so instead of purchasing the same shade that was originally used, which after years might be sun-bleached, the client can bring in a sample of the actual colour for an accurate match.

While I was impressed with the perfect match, Scott asked me not to emphasize the word “perfect” too much. “Perfect matches can be difficult because everyone sees colours differently,” he said. “From an expectations point of view, we don’t like to say ‘perfect match’ because of lighting and the way different people see colours. If you see the colour in our showroom then go see it in your home, it’s going to look different.” I mentioned that I thought the dark green roof match looked perfect to me. “It’s as close to perfect as possible,” he said, adding, “In the old days, they used to do it by eye. A lot of old guys say, ‘I have perfect colour-matching capabilities.’ We let it ride on the technology.”

Thanks to their technology and donation, and Mr. Skelton’s inspiration, the Red Cross building can return to being red.