In 2017, I tried to touch up a scuff in my hallway with a ‘near-match’ I picked out by eye at Home Depot. I was so confident. I walked in, looked at the cards for five minutes, and walked out with a quart of Behr ‘Sand Dance.’ By the time it dried, my wall looked like it had a giant, rectangular band-aid. It wasn’t even close. It was a fleshy, pinkish disaster that mocked me every time I walked to the bathroom. I ended up having to repaint the entire 12-foot hallway because I was too stubborn to admit I couldn’t see color as well as I thought I could.

Stop using your phone camera (Seriously, just stop)

Look, I know the App Store is full of these ‘magic’ apps from Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore that claim to match paint using your iPhone camera. They are lying to you. Your phone camera is designed to make photos look good, not accurate. It processes the hell out of every pixel, adjusting for white balance and shadows before you even see the image. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. Using a phone app to match paint is like trying to guess the weight of a dog by looking at its shadow. You’re missing 90% of the data.

I’ve tested these apps in high noon sun and under crappy LED bulbs. The results are all over the place. One minute my wall is ‘Agreeable Gray,’ the next it’s ‘Urban Bronze.’ If you actually care about the result, you need a dedicated sensor that carries its own light source. You need something that blocks out the world and just looks at the pigment.

If you’re relying on a free app to match a $70-a-gallon paint job, you’re just asking for a weekend of regret.

The Nix Mini 2 is the winner, but I have notes

After the hallway disaster, I bought a Nix Mini 2. It’s about the size of a ping-pong ball and looks like a high-end marshmallow. I’ve used it for three years now on everything from kitchen cabinets to a weirdly specific shade of teal on a vintage bike frame. I might be wrong about this, but I feel like the Nix software is the only one that doesn’t feel like it was built in 2004 by a guy who hates UX design.

I actually ran a test last summer when I was helping my brother-in-law match the siding on his house. I did 14 separate scans of the same patch of vinyl siding at different times of day—7 AM, noon, and 6 PM. The Nix hit the same Benjamin Moore code 13 times out of 14. That’s the kind of consistency that keeps you from losing your mind at the paint counter. It uses a 2.5mm aperture which seems tiny, but it’s enough to get a clean reading even on textured surfaces.

The only thing I hate? The charging port. It’s Micro-USB. In a world where everything is USB-C, having to hunt for that one specific cable is a genuine annoyance that makes me want to throw the device into the sun. But the battery lasts forever, so I only have to deal with that anger once every six months.

It just works.

Why I refuse to use the Datacolor ColorReader anymore

I know people will disagree with me here—especially the pro contractors who swear by Datacolor—but I find the ColorReader EZ to be a total pain in the ass. I bought one because it was $10 cheaper than the Nix, and I regretted it within twenty minutes. The device looks like a cheap inhaler. That’s not the problem, though. The problem is the Bluetooth pairing.

Every single time I try to use it, I have to go into my phone settings, forget the device, and re-pair it. Maybe I got a dud. Maybe my phone is the problem. I don’t care. When I’m standing on a ladder trying to get a reading off a ceiling crown molding, I don’t want to troubleshoot a handshake protocol. I want to press a button and see a color name. Also, the Datacolor app tries to be a ‘social network’ for designers or something. I don’t want to share my palettes. I want to buy a gallon of paint and go home.

The ‘Greige’ tangent nobody asked for

Can we talk about why every house in America is now some variation of ‘Greige’? I blame the lack of good color matching tools for this. People are so terrified of picking the wrong color that they just default to the safest, most boring beige-gray hybrid imaginable. It’s the visual equivalent of unseasoned oatmeal. Anyway, if you actually use a sensor, you might find the courage to pick a real color, like a deep forest green or a moody navy, because you’ll actually know what it looks like in your space. But I digress.

I honestly think Sherwin-Williams should be embarrassed by their ColorSnap app. It’s clunky, it crashes, and it once told me my white ceiling was ‘Deep Sea Dive.’ If you use that app for professional work, you should probably be fired. There, I said it.

Final verdict: Buy it or don’t, but stop guessing

If you have more than one room to paint, or if you’re like me and you’re constantly buying furniture off Facebook Marketplace that needs a touch-up, just get the Nix Mini 2. It’s $99. That sounds like a lot for a little plastic circle, but it’s cheaper than buying two gallons of the wrong paint and a tray of rollers you didn’t need.

• Nix Mini 2: Best for everyone. Best app. Micro-USB sucks but you’ll live.
• Datacolor ColorReader: Good if you hate yourself or love troubleshooting Bluetooth.
• The Apps: Pure fiction. Delete them.

I still have that ‘Band-aid’ patch in the back of my closet where I didn’t repaint. It serves as a reminder of my own hubris. Every time I see it, I’m reminded that my eyes are liars and the light in a Home Depot is a conspiracy.

Do you actually trust your own eyes when the sun starts going down? I definitely don’t anymore.