Original Police Box Colour

[peted]

As Chris says, royal blue can mean lots of things to lots of people... what i did in order to establish the colour was to take photos i took in 1981/82 of the crich box shortly after it arrived and took them to the paint mixing guy at Do It All. He looked out a bunch of colour charts etc and said this is 'royal blue, which would make sense, as it matches the police uniforms etc,the royal blue represents the fact they serve the queen, blah blah' so I agreed with him - it made sense, and i had him mix up several tins worth. That's what i painted my box with and yes, it's a very dark shade, almost black. I took plenty of photos of my box and basically, on a sunny day, it would look like the trolley bus pic and on a dark wintery day, it would look almost black. To me, prussian and oxford are way too light. I have never seen anything official, BBC props or otherwise, that have said 'oxford' blue. Prussian, yes, oxford, no. I might be mistaken, but the oxford blue idea came from TPE - someone asked what colour blue they painted theirs and it was oxford.

[galacticprobe]

I think I posted something under geminitimelord's Build thread that I read in a book titled "Doctor Who: The Early Years" that the original color of the Hartnell box (at least for the Pilot) was "Peruvian" blue. (If it wasn't that book, then it was in an early chapter of the book "Doctor Who: A Celebration".) My wife bought both books for me back in the '80s when they first came out.

Is there such a color as Peruvian Blue, and if so, what shade is it and how has it changed (if at all) between the 1963 version and what it looks like today?

Dino.

[DoctorWho8]

I like showing this off as a good color reference for the Hartnell TARDIS.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[lswl]

Wow, in that pic, the Tardis looks gray, not at all like the blue in the New series!

[geminitimelord]

I would like to identify this Colour Bill, would be neat to repaint my box in this Colour.

[DoctorWho8]

There seems to be a couple of shades of dark blue in use, but I can try and give RGB, CMYK, and Pantone Matching System colors for printing to help track it down.  This is based on Average Blurring in Photoshop the central parts of the doors and divider.
R=58
G=71
B=80

C=85
M=60
Y=50
K=40

PMS#7547C

Now keep in mind there are some parts that show more blue paint than others.  But it does average out to be a dark blue-gray.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[atomicgraph]

7547c awesome bill I'm a screenprinter by trade so now were talking my language!!! I'll check it out tomorrow when I have my Pantone book in hand. my tardis is in need of a repaint this might be a great base color to build off of. Thanks again bill

[galacticprobe]

Also, depending on the quality you've got your printer set for, you could always print that photo and take it to a paint/home improvement store and have them computer-match the color and mix up a batch for you. I hear they're quite good at color-matching like that these days. (That might be faster than going through all of those color chips and trying to match it against the photo yourself.)

Dino.

[geminitimelord]

Neat info. How did you come up with that?

Can you use the same formula to identify a color to match the Dark blue of the Matt Smith box?  Yes I know it is Subaru whatever but a code that could say be made into a typical Lowes paint machine?

[Rassilons Rod]

There seems to be a couple of shades of dark blue in use, but I can try and give RGB, CMYK, and Pantone Matching System colors for printing to help track it down.  This is based on Average Blurring in Photoshop the central parts of the doors and divider.
R=58
G=71
B=80

C=85
M=60
Y=50
K=40

PMS#7547C

Now keep in mind there are some parts that show more blue paint than others.  But it does average out to be a dark blue-gray.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

When I put RGB in to photoshop, it brings out a different blue than the CMYK colours... Is that intentional?

[DoctorWho8]

When I put RGB in to photoshop, it brings out a different blue than the CMYK colours... Is that intentional?

Well I did it from RGB, put my mouse over the averaged color, and my info box gave me the CMYK values.  My view is try the PMS color, which you can access from the color values screen by clicking on More Options on the right and selecting Pantone Solid Coated.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[Rassilons Rod]

Ok, I'll give that a try

[ironageman]

I've been removing layers of paint from my City of London police post. Beneath three variants on the lurid City blue there's a dark grey-blue with a hint of turquoise, rather like the Barnet box colour. I wonder whether this was a generic police colour of the time. Dulux Weathershield Oxford Blue is as close as I can find on the standard colour charts but it's far from perfect; it's too strongly blue. The mixed Dulux colour 'Venetian Crystal 1' is closer.

[tony farrell]

I wondered if you had considered Trafalgar Blue as a candidate for the real Police Boxes- this colour (along with Buckingahm Green) became popular in the late 1920s/early 1930s.

Mylands are known suppliers of paints to the TV industry, their Night Sky Blue might be a good candidate for the blue of the original Brachaki Police Box prop.

I don't know how much use this will be to you but, I hope it helps.
Tony

[marinedalek]

On the Marco Polo pic, there's a bright blue "smudge" to the left of the right hand window - maybe the overall colour has been significantly dirtied down? The bright patch looks closer to a Mylands Prussian Blue, or even Midnight. The dirtying down colour could have been thinned "night sky" however...