Mixing recipe
How to mix mint green
Target
#98D8AA
Recipe mixes to #95D8A6
Mint is a pale, cool, clean green, and a common 10-tube box cannot get there: the blues and yellows in it grey off too much when mixed with that much white. This recipe reaches for Permanent Green, a clean phthalo-based green, with Naples Yellow warming the white so the mint does not look icy.
The recipe
This one reaches outside the common 10-tube starter box. The paints above are from Masstone’s full pigment library.
Step by step
Build the pile from the biggest, lightest component and work toward the strongest tinter. Check the pile against each swatch before moving on.
- Start with 6 parts Titanium Whitepile #F6F6F4
- Work in 5 parts Naples Yellowpile #F8E1AC
- Work in 1 part Permanent Greenpile #95D8A6
A simpler mix
Titan Buff with one part of Permanent Green is a two-paint route that gets within four ΔE. It is greyer and a little darker, more like a mint that has faded. Use it for anything in shadow or when you want the color to sit back; the three-paint mix is the one for a clean, fresh mint.
What goes wrong
The single part of Permanent Green is doing all the work, and in this much white a half part too much turns mint into a swimming-pool green. Add it in small amounts and mix each fully through. Naples Yellow is gentle, so if the mix looks too cold after the green is in, more Naples is a safe correction; more Cadmium Yellow is not.
Related colors
Results vary with brand, lighting and medium. Acrylic dries a touch darker than it looks wet. Treat this as a mixing aid, not a lab instrument: it tells you which tubes to reach for and roughly in what proportion. Fine-tune the last stretch by eye.