The Blend Time Formula Mitchell Still Gets Wrong

The Mitchell blend time formula collision repair shops are running today still defaults to 50% of full refinish time. The SCRS Blend Study proved that number is wrong. Blend operations average 31.59% more time than a full refinish, not 50% less. And most Mitchell shops haven't flipped the switch that changes it.

Why This Belongs to the Same Problem We Talked About Monday

Monday we covered how carriers changed the language around what they owe you. The platform gap we're breaking down today is part of the same system. The software encodes the low number before the conversation even starts.

When your estimating system produces a blend line item that's built on a formula the industry proved wrong, you're not starting a negotiation. You're submitting documentation that already concedes the argument. The adjuster doesn't have to cut anything. The estimate already did it for them.

That's not a carrier problem. That's a software default problem. And it has a fix, if you know where to look.

What the SCRS Blend Study Actually Showed

The study wasn't done in a vacuum. SCRS conducted the research with five major North American refinish manufacturers: AkzoNobel, Axalta, BASF, PPG, and Sherwin-Williams. DEKRA audited the findings. This was industry-funded, multi-company research with independent verification.

The conclusion: blend operations, on average, take 31.59% more time than a full refinish operation. The three estimating systems at the time were all allocating blend at 50% of full refinish time. That's not 31.59% more. That's 50% less. The gap between what the software was allocating and what the research measured isn't a rounding difference. It's the difference between getting paid and donating labor.

CCC and Audatex responded by updating their systems to recognize that blend times vary and require a vehicle-by-vehicle evaluation. Audatex removed its formula entirely and changed its guidance to reflect the variables involved. CCC allowed shops to set profile-level defaults that reflect the study.

Mitchell's response was different. The guidance in the Mitchell Collision Estimating Guide still reads: "Blend adjacent panel(s): Allow .5 per refinish hour (50%) for each panel(s)/refinish area(s) blended." In early 2024, Mitchell added a profile-level setting that lets shops manually configure a different default. The announcement at the Collision Industry Conference confirmed it. And the guidance did not change.

That distinction matters. The fix exists. But you have to know to turn it on. If you're running a Mitchell shop and you haven't touched your profile settings, you're producing estimates with a blend number the research invalidated in 2022.

What This Costs on a Real Repair

Take a Toyota Camry with three blend panels. A typical full refinish on a door might carry 3.5 hours. At the Mitchell default, you're billing 1.75 hours per panel for blend. The SCRS study says those operations actually run longer than a full refinish. The documented figure isn't 1.75 hours. It's closer to 4.6 hours.

On three panels, that's an 8.57-hour difference between the default formula and the research. At a $60 labor rate, you've given away $514 before you've finished one supplement. Scale that to your monthly ticket count and the number isn't abstract anymore.

The self-diagnostic is simple: go into your Mitchell profile settings and check what your blend percentage is set to. If you've never changed it, it's 50% of full refinish. That is the default the guide still calls for. If you want it to reflect anything closer to what the research shows, you have to set it manually. Mitchell won't prompt you. The estimate won't flag it. It just runs the wrong number quietly on every job.

The Bottom Line

The SCRS Blend Study has been public since 2022. The research was thorough, the audit was independent, and the finding was clear. Three years later, Mitchell's default guidance still encodes the old number. The profile flexibility is there, but "flexible" means nothing if you don't know the default is wrong.

Check your blend setting today. If it reads 50%, you're leaving money on every refinish job that has a blend panel. Tools like Estimate Optimizer flag blend discrepancies during estimate reviews and surface jobs where the platform default is producing a number inconsistent with documented research. But the profile fix is something you can handle right now, without a tool, in five minutes. Go do it.