Paint
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40 free Paint trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Paint looks like the dullest thing in the hardware store, yet its history is full of poison, accident and odd ingredients. Colors have been made from rocks, insects, sea creatures and things far stranger, and a few of them harmed the people who worked with them. This quiz covers where famous pigments came from, what holds a coat of color together, who invented the everyday tools of the decorating trade, and why certain vehicles and landmarks wear the shades they do. It also takes in paint on screen, in song and in classic novels. It suits pub quiz teams, art students, weekend decorators and anyone who has ever stood in front of a wall of color cards. Every question comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pigment loved by Pre-Raphaelite painters was made from the ground-up flesh of ancient corpses?
Mummy brown
Mummy brown was ground from real mummies, human and feline, mixed with pitch and myrrh. Edward Burne-Jones is said to have buried his tube in the garden on learning what it was.
Q 02Which Ford car was sold only in black from 1914 to 1925, yet was not offered in black at first?
Model T
The Model T came only in gray, green, blue and red from 1908 to 1913. Ford then went all-black, and carbon black was one of the cheapest pigments available.
Q 03Which vehicles got a standard yellow in 1939 because black lettering on it reads well in dim light?
School buses
School buses got their yellow at a 1939 conference organized by professor Frank Cyr, who became known as the Father of the Yellow School Bus. The shade was also picked because it stands out at a distance.
Q 04Which element in glowing dial paint poisoned 1920s workers who licked their brushes to a point?
Radium
Radium was the glow in a paint sold as Undark, and the dial painters were told it was harmless. Managers had them use their lips because rags and rinsing wasted time and material.
Q 05Which Mark Twain character tricks other children into paying to whitewash his aunt's fence for him?
Tom Sawyer
Tom Sawyer is handed the chore by Aunt Polly as punishment for sneaking home late after a fight. He makes the job look so enjoyable that the others hand over trinkets for a turn.
Q 06Which landmark is painted International Orange, not the black and yellow stripes the US Navy wanted?
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge owes its color to architect Irving Morrow, who chose it to suit the landscape and show up in fog. Officially the shade is an orange vermilion.
Q 07Which host of The Joy of Painting kept his famous perm only because it was on the company logo?
Bob Ross
Bob Ross first permed his hair to save money on haircuts, and later confessed that he disliked the style. He picked up his quick wet-on-wet method from a German painter's TV show.
Q 08Which insect is crushed to make carmine, a red pigment used in paints, cosmetics and food coloring?
Cochineal
Cochineal insects were prized for their red coloring power as early as 700 BC. The Spanish Crown held a European monopoly on them until 1820, and they were a major source of its income.
Q 09NASA stopped painting which Space Shuttle part white after two flights, saving about 600 pounds?
External tank
The external tank flew white on the first two missions to shield its foam from ultraviolet light. An engineer pointed out the paint did not protect it, so later ones kept their bare insulation.
Q 10The first paintball guns were built for foresters and ranchers to do which job?
Marking trees and cattle
Marking trees and cattle was the job of the guns a friend spotted in a farm catalog. A stock trader and an outdoorsman used them in New Hampshire in 1981 to settle an argument.
Q 11Which toxic metal has been banned from household paint in the United States since 1978?
Lead
Lead stayed legal in some road-marking and artists' paints after the 1978 ban. Britain went on selling it to the general public until 1992.
Q 12Which blue pigment, at times valued as highly as gold, was ground from the stone lapis lazuli?
Ultramarine
Ultramarine means 'beyond the sea', because Italian traders imported it from mines in Afghanistan. Renaissance painters used it especially for the robes of the Virgin Mary.
Q 13Before oil paint replaced it, tempera painters usually bound their pigments with which food?
Egg yolk
Egg yolk gives tempera a fast-drying, permanent finish. Oil took over as the main medium in northern Europe during the 15th century, and in Italy around 1500.
Q 21Which Western star did his own singing beside Lee Marvin in the 1969 musical Paint Your Wagon?
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood sang for himself in the film, while co-star Jean Seberg had her songs dubbed. Marvin took his role instead of appearing in The Wild Bunch.
Q 22In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, card gardeners paint white roses red to appease which ruler?
Queen of Hearts
The Queen of Hearts is often confused with the Red Queen, a different character from Lewis Carroll's 1871 sequel. Disney's 1951 animated film kept the mix-up going.
Q 23In The Karate Kid, which mentor has Daniel wax cars and paint a fence as hidden training?
Mr. Miyagi
Q 14Which hardware-store staple did Edward Seymour invent in 1949 to show off his aluminum radiator coating?
Spray paint
Spray paint came about when Seymour's wife Bonnie suggested putting his coating into the kind of pressurized can already on sale. It was only meant as a way to demonstrate the product.
Q 15Which landmark is painted in three shades, darkest at the bottom, and recoated every seven years?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower takes about 60 tons of paint each time, to keep its iron from corroding. The shades lighten toward the top to complement the Paris sky.
Q 16Which farm buildings in the northern United States are traditionally painted red with a white trim?
Barns
Barns may have gone red because ferric oxide, the pigment in red paint, was the cheapest and most readily available chemical for New England farmers.
Q 17Which shaggy breed is nicknamed the Dulux dog after decades as a British paint brand's mascot?
Old English Sheepdog
The Old English Sheepdog has fronted Dulux advertising since the early 1960s. Different dogs have played the part over the years.
Q 18Which Indian instrument does Brian Jones play on the Rolling Stones' 1966 hit Paint It Black?
Sitar
The sitar made Paint It Black the first chart-topping single to feature the instrument. The song grew out of melodies that Jones improvised on it.
Q 19Which American artist dripped and poured household paint onto canvases laid flat on the floor?
Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock made his most famous drip paintings between 1947 and 1950. Working on a horizontal surface let him view and paint a canvas from all angles.
Q 20Which poison made Scheele's green, a pigment in Victorian wallpaper and paint, so dangerous?
Arsenic
Arsenic in Scheele's green also colored candles and children's toys. Journals of the day told of children wasting away in bright green rooms.
Mr. Miyagi has Daniel paint the fence with vertical strokes and the house with horizontal ones. The repeated motions turn out to be defensive blocks, learned through muscle memory.
Q 24Linseed oil, the classic binder in oil paint and a key part of linoleum, comes from which plant?
Flax
Flax seeds are dried and pressed for the oil, whose polymer-forming properties make it harden as it dries. In its edible form the same oil is sold as flaxseed oil.
Q 25Which product did 3M's Richard Drew create in 1925 after watching frustrated car painters at work?
Masking tape
Masking tape solved a problem Drew saw in auto body shops, where workers grew frustrated removing the butcher paper they had stuck to cars. He realized they needed a gentler adhesive.
Q 26The collapsible paint tube of 1841 made outdoor painting far easier for which French art movement?
Impressionism
Impressionism leaned on open-air work, and Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Renoir did much of their painting outdoors. The tube was invented by an American portraitist, John G. Rand.
Q 27The pigment sepia came from the ink sac of which sea animal, whose Greek name it borrows?
Cuttlefish
Cuttlefish of the genus Sepia gave the pigment both its raw material and its name. The word is the Latinized form of the ancient Greek for the animal.
Q 28In which James Bond film is Jill Masterson found dead, her whole body coated in metallic paint?
Goldfinger
Goldfinger has Bond wake after being knocked out to find her dead of what the film calls skin suffocation. Shirley Eaton played the part.
Q 29The Painted Desert, named by a Spanish expedition in 1540 for its colors, lies in which US state?
Arizona
Arizona's Painted Desert runs from near the Grand Canyon into Petrified Forest National Park. Iron and manganese compounds in the rock layers supply its reds and lavenders.
Q 30Which compound, mass-produced since 1916, is the most widely used white pigment in paint?
Titanium dioxide
Titanium dioxide owes its brightness to a very high refractive index. It also turns up in sunscreen, food coloring and most toothpastes.