Door switch panel strange "wood" colours
 

It's been commented on before that the switch panels in the doors, when they are "wood effect" (painted metal!) the colour is significantly different to the rest of the trim.
Though that can also vary somewhat across different items and vehicles that are nominally the same colour.

A while back I replaced my horrid soft plastic door switch surrounds with Vavona effect ones. They look good even though the rest of the car is a different more restrained shade of brown.

Today I decided to revisit swapping some of the other interior trim to Vavona, and in the bright sunlight was reminded why. See attached picture; the top is the OEM trim, consistent through the car, the diagonal unfitted piece is Vavona, I bought a whole set of that and have a number of items left over (sold some) and the switch panel is also Vavona.

As you can see the switch panel works well against the beige trim, but is a very different colour to the rest of the Vavona, nothing like as "orange". I wonder why this is? :Confused:

Myrtle is a really poor match too, but the walnut is ok. Its because the door inserts are printed on to metal rather than laminated actual wood. If you look really closely you can see artefacts of the printing process in the pattern. They obviously couldn't get (or couldn't be bothered to get) a good match to the actual wood.

Maple with twist is an unusual combination isn't it? All the twist interiors I've seen have either had walnut or vavona. Maple seemed to mostly come with black.

That is a significant colour variance!
But personally, I like the Vavona better than your present colour

I'm not so sure, which is why I only changed the door switch panels. :tuttut:
The "gentler" Vavona of those panels works well against the beige leather/alcantara.
The brighter orange other trim panels would all be set in the grey plastic and not look so good.

But maybe as I have one door in pieces I might try it? The door trims are just a press fit anyway.

Wouldn't have been made by different third parties by any chance?

Also, the soft plastic finish of the switch panels appears to be a coating applied over the woodgrain panels, as the ones on my Silver car have worn through to reveal the woodgrain.
Perhaps this was a response to the poor colour match?

Very likely different suppliers yeah.

I wonder if your soft finish over wood could have been a supply issue as the non-wood panels I've seen are all plain aluminium underneath. At the end of the run they may not have had wood panels in the right colour combinations so just painted them to match instead?

has anybody resprayed the parts to do away with the wood effect ?

I guess there will be quite a few who have done some carbon effect wrapping, but what about a straight colour ?

any pics ?

A german guy did paint his green. The whole car looks quite good with the green details

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1536670865

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1536670865