Introducing Setra™: CTI's Custom Paint Program Built Around Your Product

For most manufacturers and distributors, paint is treated as a single color, a single formula, applied the same way to every part that moves down the line. But the people who actually build with these components know that a coating is only as good as how well it fits the product, the environment, and the brand it carries. A finish that works beautifully on an interior casing can fail on an exterior frame. A color that looks right on one batch can drift on the next.

That's the gap Setra™ was built to close. Setra™ is CTI's customizable paint program, engineered to develop customer-specific paint solutions that meet your exact product, performance, and appearance requirements. Rather than handing you a fixed coating and asking you to make it work, CTI formulates, tests, and applies a paint program tailored to your product, its end use, and the way it needs to perform once it leaves the line. The result is a finished component that arrives closer to install-ready or shelf condition, and a finishing strategy that's actually designed around your business.

A Paint Program, Not a Paint Product

The easiest way to understand Setra™ is to be clear about what it isn't. It is not a single, static formula. It isn't a standard, off-the-shelf coating that every customer receives in the same form, and it isn't a rigid, one-size-fits-all application limited to one method.

Setra™ is a flexible platform. It's a customer-specific paint development system that combines color matching, performance engineering, and application flexibility into one program and is backed by the same deep engineering expertise CTI brings to the rest of its door components and millwork. In practice, that means two customers can come to CTI with completely different products, end uses, and brand standards, and each receive a paint program built specifically for them.

Built Around Your Product 

Because Setra™ is a program rather than a fixed offering, the customization runs deep. CTI develops solutions using a range of coating technologies, including UV and acrylic coatings, and will evaluate additional technologies when a customer's product calls for it.

From there, the program can be tuned across several dimensions:

• Interior and exterior applications: coatings formulated for the demands of where the product actually lives.

• Surface protection: anti-marring performance plus scuff, scratch, and abrasion resistance for components that take a beating in transit and on the jobsite.

• Appearance retention: improved durability and long-term appearance maintenance that keeps finishes looking new with reduced visible wear.

• Gloss and sheen control: matte, satin, semi-gloss, or a custom sheen developed to your specification.

Whether the product is a run of interior molding and trim, a set of door frame components, or exterior-rated stock headed for a tough climate, the paint program is engineered to the job rather than forced onto it.

Color Matching, Done With Precision

Setra™ provides custom color development and matching built to each customer's exact specifications, and CTI keeps that work in-house. Using spectrophotometer technology, the team analyzes target colors and develops formulations internally, matching customer-specific color standards and paint codes down to the sheen.

Before a single piece goes into production, customer approval samples are produced and signed off, confirming both color accuracy and performance expectations up front. While Setra™ is fully customized to each customer's specific color codes, CTI maintains active production systems for a wide variety of commercial colors:

• White & Cream: Standard bright whites, off-whites, and warm alabaster tones.

• Black & Charcoal: Modern dark grays, architectural charcoals, and deep blacks.

• Custom Specialties: Bespoke grays, blues, and project-specific color schemes.

Setra™ isn't limited to standard palettes. If you can specify the pigment, CTI can design and match-test it.

What You Get Out of It

The day-to-day payoff of Setra™ comes down to four things working together:

• Aesthetic integrity: striking visual appeal with uniform finish control.

• Durability and longevity: coatings built to withstand tough environmental factors.

• Color consistency: production color accuracy that holds batch after batch.

• Installation readiness: components that reduce field work and arrive ready for the shelf or the jobsite.

  
  

Taken together, that's a paint program that helps improve consistency and simplify the path from manufacturing to installation.

Made to Match

In a building products industry where finishing is too often standardized and shipped, Setra™ takes the opposite approach. Every program is engineered around your product, your colors, and your performance criteria. That's the idea behind the name. Setra™ is made to match.

Ready to develop a paint program built around your product? Contact the CTI team to talk through your color standards, performance requirements, and end-use goals.