Several taping tool companies now offer drywall colorant. If you are choosing between them and us, here is a framework you can apply to any of them — including ours.
Because it works, and because their customers started asking for it. Taping tool companies sell to exactly the people who benefit most from color-coded coats, so it is a natural line extension. Their distribution is excellent and their sales reps are already in front of finishing crews.
We are not going to tell you that a product is bad because of whose name is on it. What we will tell you is what actually varies between colorants, so you can judge for yourself.
Concentration, and therefore real cost. This is the biggest hidden variable. Colorants vary widely in pigment load, and bottle size tells you nothing about value. The number that matters is cost per five-gallon bucket tinted. Ask any supplier for their recommended ratio, then divide.
Carrier: gel, liquid or powder. Gels and liquids disperse in a mud pan with a knife. Powders generally want a paddle mixer and are more prone to clumping and to changing the body of the compound. If you tint by the pan rather than by the bucket, this decides whether you will keep using the product.
Primer coverage. The expensive difference. Any colorant used too heavily can telegraph through primer, but formulations vary in how much margin they give you before that happens. Test at your real working ratio, prime once, and look at it in daylight.
Color range and the finish coat. Single-color products let you see your mud. Multi-color lines let you track coats, which is where most of the value is. Check specifically whether a neutral grey is offered for the final pass.
Availability next season. Line extensions get discontinued. If you are building a crew workflow around color coding, it is worth knowing whether the product is a core business for whoever sells it or a shelf experiment.
Never Miss has made exactly one thing since 2007: coloring gel for joint compound. Melton Tuberville, a union drywall contractor in Kentucky, built it because the product did not exist and he needed it on his own jobs. That is the entire company.
What that buys you is nineteen years of formulation refinement on one product, six colors including a grey specifically for finish coats, and a company for whom this is not a side line. It has been endorsed by CertainTeed, won an AWCI Innovation award, and was used on One World Trade Center.
What it does not buy you is a national sales rep network or same-day availability at a tool counter. If you need it tomorrow from a local branch, a tool company product may genuinely serve you better this week. We ship direct and through Amazon.
Buy one bottle of whatever you are considering and run this on a single wall:
Any colorant that clears all five is a good product regardless of the name on the label. Any that fails step three or four will cost you more than it saves.
Blue and yellow is the usual starting pair — mixed together they also give you green, so two bottles covers three coats. Add Final Coat grey when you want to run full coat-coding through to the finish pass.
One product, nineteen years, six colors. Try one bottle.
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