Color and Name

When you convert a camper yourself, it simply has to get an individual paint job - at least that's what we think. And of course, we didn't want to call our “baby” just Bulli forever. So what should its name be?

Color of the vehicle

When buying the van, Frank originally thought he would just apply a clear coat to preserve the small dents and rusty spots especially because it still had the “Fire Department” lettering, including the local crest and the town's name. According to online research, this lettering is generally allowed on a private vehicle, whereas “Police” is not permitted.
Unfortunately, the seller's municipality insisted on removing all lettering. So the seller went at it with a heat gun and scraper and removed it. But in the process, some of the paint was damaged and adhesive residue remained. A simple clear coat was now out of the question. The only solution seemed to be a complete repainting. And if you have to repaint anyway, you might as well choose a new color.
Since it was a classic Bulli, choosing a vintage Bulli color scheme seemed obvious. The Internet offered every bit of information imaginable, and quickly was found a first ideas. It was to be painted in an original Samba design in turquoise and white. However, the colors didn't quite match Frank's vision, so he experimented until he was happy.
That was before he met Andrea.

Together, the topic of color came up again, and surprisingly, we were immediately on the same page. The lower half would be turquoise, and the upper half a dark white or light grey. But what exactly should the colors look like? That question kept us busy for weeks.
Apparently, we both had a pretty specific idea, because whenever we found a color we liked, we would immediately say in unison, “too green”, “too blue”, “too light” or “too dark”.
Colors are literally everywhere - car paint jobs, wraps, clothing, posters - so we were never short on inspiration. But somehow, our perfect color just wasn't among them. So we spent a lot of time at hardware stores collecting color swatches, searching online for samples, and looking everywhere around us for that ideal shade.

Since a combination of light grey and turquoise is rare, we also used the computer to create our own color samples. That way we could evaluate combinations on screen. Unfortunately, we soon realized that printed samples looked completely different from those on the monitor, and hardware store swatches looked different again.
Andrea also spotted colors in clients' clothing from time to time. Many thanks to Mrs. P. K., M. B., and G. K., who kindly allowed their workout clothes to be photographed. But even here, the original and the photo differed enough to make things tricky.
In the end, “our” color was probably a mixture of all the tones we had gathered.

At some point, we finally found the color, and it really felt like a lightbulb turning on. 😉

After finding “our” colors, we stumbled upon an older photo of the van that Frank had edited. To our surprise, he had chosen nearly the same color tone back when he was planning “his” van before we even met.
That once again showed us how similarly we think.

When we started looking for a professional painter in Fürstenwalde, we suddenly faced new difficulties. While everyone said they could mix our custom color, things changed as soon as we showed them our chosen shade. No painter wanted - or maybe was able - to mix it. They all insisted on a predefined color name, such as a RAL tone or a paint from a specific car manufacturer.
We soon learned why: computer colors work differently from real-world colors. A screen emits light and uses additive color mixing - combining red, green, and blue (RGB). Black is 0,0,0 and white is 255,255,255. Our turquoise corresponded to 8,255,245.
In nature, however, sunlight is the decisive source of light. Sunlight has the complete colour spectrum and is therefore white. Colours are created through absorption and thus through subtraction. If a surface reflects all light waves, it appears white. If, on the other hand, it only reflects the red portion, it appears red. This is why the colours turquoise (cyan), magenta and yellow are used in the world of colour printing. For pure black, black is added as a “key” and we get the CMYK colour model. Now you can convert RGB values to CMYK values, but unfortunately these basic colours are not used in the field of car paints. That would be too easy.
Here, each manufacturer has its own basic colours and corresponding mixing tables for all its paint variants. The paint variants are listed in the company's own colour charts. When a colour is selected from these charts, the manufacturer can mix it precisely from its basic colours.
Since our painter also wanted a well-known color name or a defined color number, we were a bit at a loss. Fortunately, we quickly found what we were looking for with our shade of gray. The color tone “Shadow White” from RAL Design almost exactly matched our desired color. However, it became more difficult with the turquoise. On the internet, the RGB values could be processed and colors close to it were suggested to us. However, this only worked through the RAL color system. And to be honest, none of the suggestions looked even remotely like our color. In the end, we got on our bikes and rode to another painter. We confronted him with our desired color as well and were promptly turned down. But being customer-oriented, the owner pulled out a color fan deck and we once again searched through countless colors. Our exact shade wasn't there, but we found a color we were happy with. The color number was quickly written down, and we headed home happily.
We sent the details to our painter via WhatsApp and thought everything was finally settled. Far from it! Every painter uses colors from a different manufacturer. As a result, our painter once again couldn't do anything with the color shade. Instead, he gave us a color fan deck from his own supplier, and the search for the right color started all over again. Once again, we just couldn't reach an agreement. None of the colors looked like ours. What now? We finally needed a color. In the end, we pulled out our printed business card. We had already noticed that the colors there didn't match what we actually wanted either. But with the help of the business card, we at least found a shade that matched it. Not entirely happy with the choice, we nevertheless quickly passed the color number on to our painter.
At long last, the colors were set — and our Pleasure-Van “Felía” could be painted.

To be continued…

Pleasure-Van Felía

Yes, our car also needed a name - apparently that's common among camper van people. Again and again, you hear RV and van owners lovingly call their vehicles things like “Sepp”, “Jason” or classics like “Dusty”, “Brummi” or names inspired by models or colors such as “Samba”. We admit it: we also liked the idea of not just calling it ⤶Bulli”, since everybody has one of those.
Because we wanted to design “our car” ourselves, it needed its own name too.
We didn't want to call our T4 just “Pleasure-Van” either.
So we started browsing baby-name websites - which felt funny and a bit surreal. We never thought we'd be looking up baby names online. Weren't we a bit too old for that? But we began to enjoy it! We thought using our initials would be nice.
But names starting with A and ending with F led to results we definitely didn't want — like Alf (we didn't want to drive around with an “Alien Life Form”!) or a certain Austrian who ended up in the history books.
So we reversed the initials - and suddenly found Felía! Our “child” was born! We think the name is cute and just right, especially for us. 😉