Happy Thanksgiving to my Lexus brothers,
My 2019 RX in Atomic Silver got sideswiped, while parked - affecting driver-side panel over the front wheel and panel circumventing the grill.
While waiting for my turn to be fixed up at a well-established body shop, I started reading up on how difficult it is to match my Atomic Silver.
Temperature fluctuations, orientation of metallic speckles and other things that may affect the paint job match.
Entertaining the following options:
1. Going with the flow and see how color matching comes out. Not sure I will be happy with the less than perfect job.
2. Basically an option 1 but then go with some vinyl decal to hide likely color discrepancies - concern: RX is such a classy vehicle and I don't want anything that will offend the look too much.
3. Will need to make decision on this before the car is painted - paint 2 front panels on both sides of the car with another complementing color. But then again Atomic Silver is such a beautiful and classy look - what color would you counter it with? Atomic Matte? Black Matte?
Never cared for quality of a paint job before as I never had a new car.
Thank you in advance

I would go with option 1. If you not happy with it, trade in ASAP after you get it back or sell it outright.Its never going to be worth more then it is now!

We had a driver's side rear door scratched from a parking garage in NYC occur when the RX was just 6 months old. Luckily, we have a great body shop we have used for years. They basically put a lifetime guarantee on their work. They had to smooth, paint and blend the door and rear panel. The repair is completely un-noticeable even two years later. I would go with Option 1 at a well-respected auto body shop that stands behind their work.

Matching any of these new car colors can be challenging for decent body shops. My RX eminent white pearl has issues also since it's not actually white.
If it's a really good body shop using the correct paint number they should be able to blend in to match your car's paint.
If it was me I wouldn't go with options 2 & 3 but make them get it as close as possible. If not satisfied go with jimbosr1 option 4 and trade it.

Actually, todays paint technology and mixing machines have come a long, long way. Lexus has “certified” body shop dealers (at least they did seven years ago). That would be my first choice to look for. I’ve had three Audi/BMWs that needed repainted bumpers in the past six years. You would have never known they were repainted.

Thank you for the feedback - enjoy the holidays to the fullest.

But did those cars have FOUR stage paint like AS is.

No, and I get that more stages raise the chance for worse results. Our GX that we just traded had the Pearl White and I had to touch up a dime size spot. I actually did some home brewed mixing because nothing they sold in touch up even came close to working. I swore I would never buy that color again!

My wife's RX is also Eminent White Pearl which is THREE stage - I tried to touch up a tiny stone chip with a Lexus OEM touch up kit that includes all three bottles - base coat, mid coat and clear coat. It looks awful but too small to keep me up at night. I suspect the body shops are learning how to deal with these multistage paints though.

I'm sure he's know better than we do

And I know less than you

I've had two atomic silver repairs on my 2017 RX. The body shop did a great job matching each time. I fell in love with the color when I first saw it on the NX. It is by far my favorite color of all the RX's I've had.