Pantone to Benjamin Moore Converter

What is Benjamin Moore?

Benjamin Moore has been making paint in the United States since 1883 and occupies the premium end of the North American architectural market. It sells almost entirely through independent dealers rather than big-box retail, which is a deliberate positioning: the company competes on colour depth, pigment quality and the advice that comes with an independent paint store, rather than on shelf price.

Its catalogue runs to roughly 3,500 colours, organised into named collections whose prefix appears in the code. HC is Historical Color, a curated set drawn from American architectural precedent and the source of some of its best-known colours. OC is Off-White, an unusually deep run of near-neutrals. AF is Affinity, a collection designed so that any two colours in it work together. CC is Color Preview, the saturated end of the range. Plain four-digit numbers such as 2062-10 belong to the Classic Colors system.

A handful of its colours have become genuinely canonical in interior design. OC-17 White Dove and OC-65 Chantilly Lace are among the most specified whites in North America; HC-172 Revere Pewter defined a decade of warm-grey interiors; HC-154 Hale Navy is the reference deep navy for cabinetry and joinery. This converter is weighted toward those widely specified collection colours rather than attempting the entire 3,500.

As with any house paint, the gap between a Pantone chip and a painted wall is real and unavoidable. Printing ink is formulated to hit one colour on paper under controlled light; wall paint is formulated to cover, to wash, and to hold up across the entire range of light a room actually sees. Benjamin Moore’s reputation rests partly on how well its colours behave under changing light, but no paint colour is a fixed value the way a printed chip is.

Pantone vs Benjamin Moore: how they differ

Worked Pantone → Benjamin Moore conversions

Who converts Pantone to Benjamin Moore?

Converting Pantone to Benjamin Moore is the step between a brand or design reference and a paint a dealer can actually tint.

• Premium residential interiors — Designers working from a fabric, artwork or brand reference held in Pantone need the BM code before the finishes schedule can be issued.
• Hospitality and boutique retail — Hotels and independent retail specify Benjamin Moore frequently. Brand colours have to be translated into codes local painters can order.
• Millwork and cabinetry colour — Deep BM colours such as Hale Navy dominate painted cabinetry. Matching to a brand or scheme colour starts from the Pantone reference.
• Historic and period-appropriate schemes — The HC Historical Color collection exists for exactly this work, and matching from a documented reference colour is the usual route in.
• Coordinating paint with printed material — Where a painted wall sits beside printed graphics or wallpaper, working from the printed spec keeps both reading as one colour.
• Writing architectural finish schedules — Specifications quote manufacturer and code. A Pantone-only reference has to be converted before it can be issued to contractors.

How to use this Pantone to Benjamin Moore converter

Say you are painting kitchen cabinetry to match a client’s brand navy, specified as Pantone 7686 C. Search 7686, take the top Benjamin Moore code, and get a sample pot brushed onto a spare door rather than a card — cabinetry is usually finished in a higher sheen than walls, and the same colour in semi-gloss on a vertical door reads noticeably different from a matte patch on a wall.

1. Enter a Pantone number or name in the search box and select the colour from the suggestions.
2. Read the five closest Benjamin Moore colours, ordered from the smallest ΔE*00 colour difference upward.
3. Note the collection prefix on each result — HC, OC, AF, CC or a Classic number — since dealers organise their fan decks by collection.
4. Copy the full code including the prefix. "172" is ambiguous; "HC-172" is not.
5. Buy sample pots of your top two candidates and paint a large test area — on a spare door or board for joinery, directly on the wall for wall colour.
6. Assess in daylight and under the room’s actual evening lighting, in the sheen you intend to use.

Accuracy — read before you specify a colour

Two limits apply. First, the material: printed ink and tinted paint are engineered for different jobs, and a painted surface shifts with room light, orientation, sheen and the colours around it in a way a printed chip never does. Second, coverage: Benjamin Moore publishes around 3,500 colours and this tool matches against a curated subset of the widely specified ones, weighted toward the HC, OC and AF collections. For a saturated brand colour there may well be a closer match in the full deck — and a dealer can often custom-tint to a physical sample, which beats any stock match.

Results are ranked by ΔE*00 (CIEDE2000). Below 1 is imperceptible, 1–2 is a commercial match, 2–5 shows side by side, above 5 reads as a different colour. Neutrals and muted colours will match well here; saturated brand colours will not, because that is not what an interior paint collection is built to contain. Treat the number as a filter for which sample pots to buy, never as a substitute for looking at paint on the actual surface.

In short: conversion values on this page are approximate, because the two systems use different colourants and cover different gamuts. Verify against the official physical colour standard before committing to production, tooling or a signed-off brand spec.

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