Automobile manufacturers identify paint used on their vehicles with identification codes. However, as many automobile manufacturers use different and proprietary naming conventions to these codes, it can be challenging for a normal person to find the specific type of paint applied to a vehicle. In this paper, we facilitate this process by developing a portable mobile system to detect paint codes for vehicles. To determine the best matching paint code using the images captured by a mobile device, several practical issues should be examined. First of all, multiple images are captured through the camera viewfinder and the same collection of pixel values are computed collectively to estimate the most accurate color across a short period of time. Second, all pixels in a square region centered on the selected spot are sampled for color estimation to achieve the best match. Finally, in case multiple matches are detected, the closest match should be displayed to the user first, followed by the next closest values. Extensive experiments demonstrate the color detection and matching functionality of our system is robust against varying lighting environments. The scope of this work can be further expanded to other painting industries such as furniture making and construction.