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Paint your walls with these famous hues

We scanned these well-known shades, so you can paint your bedroom tractor green.

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Molly Price
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1 of 13 Molly Price/CNET

A colorful world

Sometimes you really need to paint your workshop Harley Davidson orange. Fortunately, paint scanners can help you find the perfect shade of paint. 

Alongside our roundup of three different paint scanners, we also took it upon ourselves to see how well these things could pull the color from a handful of iconic brands.

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2 of 13 Chris Monroe/CNET

Finding the perfect paint

Scanners like the $59 (AU$83 or roughly £44 converted) Color Muse, $100 (roughly AU$130 or £75 converted) Nix Mini and $49 (AU$65 or £35 roughly converted) Palette Pico are designed to scan objects and connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth to suggest the closest paint color.

We scanned these prominent colors to see what these scanners would suggest. Let's take a look.

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3 of 13 Chris Monroe/CNET

Color Muse

Color Muse, a $59 Bluetooth-connected sensor, shines white light on the surface. Color Muse needs just 4 millimeters of surface to measure, and it transmits the results to the Color Muse app, where you can see color values and paint match suggestions.

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4 of 13 Chris Monroe/CNET

Nix Mini

Nix color sensors are the priciest of the three I tested. At $100, the Nix Mini is a Bluetooth sensor with two apps. The Nix Paints app is specifically for paint matching; the Nix Digital app reports colors in RGB values, as well as CMYK (for print) and Hexadecimal (for web).

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5 of 13 Chris Monroe/CNET

Palette Pico

Australian company Palette released Pico this year. The $49 paint matching device sequentially bursts red, green and blue light onto the surface you scan. It then shares those results via Bluetooth in your smartphone's Pico app. Pico reports the the RGB values and matching branded paint colors.

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6 of 13 Molly Price/CNET

Grass-mowing green

This iconic mowing machine has stayed true to its hue over the decades. With a scanned RGB value of 61,104,49 Nix Mini's match for J.D was Sherwin-Williams Lime Twist.

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7 of 13 Molly Price/CNET

All mixed up

Not quite orange and not quite pink, KitchenAid calls this shade Bird of Paradise. The tropical theme doesn't stop there. The Color Muse match for this iconic mixing machine was Sherwin-Williams Coral Passion. The RGB value was 237,130,109.

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8 of 13 Molly Price/CNET

Marked in red

Scanned by the Nix Mini for an RGB value of 164,0,50, this classic Kentucky bourbon matched Valspar's Quite Red.

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9 of 13 Molly Price/CNET

Color it yellow

The childhood color experts choose bright yellow for their signature packaging. Color Muse measured this cheery shade at an RGB of 239,193,35 and matched it to Valspar's Buttered Toffee.

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10 of 13 Molly Price/CNET

Marvel-ous red

Iron Man's signature color was deemed by the Nix Mini to be Sherwin-Williams Bolero, with an RGB value of 155,56,60.

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11 of 13 Molly Price/CNET

Rev it up orange

While this famous bike brand's orange has always been bold, the matching paint color Color Muse picked from Valspar is less intimidating. It matched an orange called Roasted Squash, with an RGB value of 213,111,61.

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12 of 13 Molly Price/CNET

Designer teal

Perhaps one of the most well-known colors in retail, this classic jewelry brand's influence reaches across categories -- even into the paint world.  The Nix Mini dubbed Sherwin-Williams Little Blue Box as the best (and most obvious) match. The RGB value scanned was 136,201,195.

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13 of 13 Molly Price/CNET

Pretty in pink

This iconic doll and her friends have been around for decades wearing their signature color. The Color Muse scanned and RGB value of 183,66,123 and matched this popular pink to Sherwin-Williams Exuberant Pink.

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