I recently had a minor bump up and had the place fixed. The body shop did an excellent job overall.
My rear bumper was painted in tiny spot mid way, looks perfect, they clear coated the entire bumper, they told me that sometimes clear coat can alter the paint color a bit and that if i noticed anything to bring it back. Is this true, can clear coat alter the color if it color was never applied to the area in question?
Thanks!

 

Sure.

Any mix of materials will reflect light a certain way - color and direction. If the Clearcoat mixture is a little different than the OE Clearcoat there could be an apparent difference.

The liklihood is pretty small as the body shop will try to use the OE formula and feather the coating together. However there is always a risk when you use different material batches to mix paints/colors.

I know you're picky about the color and how hard you worked to get your bumper to better match the body. If you're not happy take it back and let them fis it.

 

I think I'll take it back and have him look at it, they are really awesome to deal with so that's why I'm not mad about it. I'm sure they will make it right for me.
Thanks for the info Bearcat!

 

Bear is correct. It also has a lot to do with the thickness of the clearcoat. I had a silver Audi that needed the front end painted, and it didn't match due to the clearcoat (too much made it darker). They had to sand it down to the base and redo it.

 

well on the bumpers they add a material called flex so that if the bumper is touched the paint flexes to a degree instead of chipping so that would have an effect the color as well.