"Professional" paint (Sherwin Williams, etc) vs Box-Store paint

[Mel Fulks]

Our house was painted with Sherwin Williams several years ago. Holding up well. Painter used two ...maybe three kinds
of the brand. I don't like the fact that they have a bunch of paints with names that tell nothing about how they differ in
use.

[Andrew Seemann]

The paint guy at the local hardware store told me a couple years ago that the Valspar stuff at Lowes wasn't the same as the Valspar sold at hardware stores; it was a lower line that was intended to be price competitive with the standard low grade crud they have at the big boxes. I know the names and cans are different. I think the one I use from the hardware store is the Medallion line. It seems to work well as far as I can tell.

[roger wiegand]

SW Duration or BM Aura for me. Life is too short to use lousy paint. Since I mostly DIY I'm looking for ease of application-- coverage, leveling, ease of cutting a line, spattering etc. I find these paints far easier to us than the Borg varieties. We painted our house and new addition 7 years ago (done by pros) in two colors-- the color done in SW Duration still looks pretty much like new, the other color (brand unknown to me) was weathered down to the wood on the sunny side of the house and required repainting this summer.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Down outside of DC in the Maryland Burbs north of Greenbelt., there was a field 30 years ago with hundreds of panels set at angles, like solar farm panels, but they had multiple blotches of different colored paints. It was part of some government testing facility. I often wondered exactly what they were testing, (paint supplied for gov't contracts? ) but more so which paints held up the best. I have driven that stretch a few times in the past year and the paint panels are no longer out in that field.



Many years ago, I bought some US Navy surplus oil paint, Gray of course. everything, mostly farm equipment, I painted with that stuff looked good and was resisting rust 20 years later when I repainted everything with some other paint, that isn't holding up as well. At $5 a gallon, I wish I had purchased a lot more.

We moved into our new house three years ago and have been putting off painting. The contractor left with walls with some ghostly flat white primer on it. I have sort of grown accustomed to the white and dread picking out any colors to match the current fashions that might change next year. (The old house had a bedroom painted avocado when we moved in another bedroom was painted a deep purple with black trim. those are not me ) I look in the home magazines and see these bizarre dark colored red and blue walls. Yech. Nor do I want institutional yellow or green. The whole subject causes a sangfroid.
.

[Jim Becker]

Good idea to be on SW's (and BM's) mailing list as they often have sales which make the prices VERY competitive with 'borg paint. I always try to take advantage of that for obvious reasons, albeit "timing is everything".

[Jim Becker]

We just finished a new house. The person who painted most of the house used Sherwin Williams brand for most of it. We did some painting ourselves and used the paint he bought and premium Behr paint from Home Depot, which we bought. We were able to compare the two materials side by side at the same time. I much prefer the Behr. It is smoother and covers better than SW. I would not buy SW if Behr is available. I can't say about Benjamin Moore, other than they have an idiot for a salesman in my town. We tried Valspar several years ago and I didn't like it but I can't remember whether it was the cheap or premium grade.

"Which" SW paint was being compared to the Behr? There are multiple grades of paint and it does make a difference. Note, I'm not saying your experience is flawed in any way...but to be complete, knowing what SW paint was involved is important information. They do carry some pretty basic stuff in addition to the more premium levels of product.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Valspar drywall primer horror story follows:

We did a house, new drywall throughout. My crew are not "painters", but we do it often, and the homeowners really wanted us to do it on this project. I bought the estimated amount of Valspar drywall primer that the company recommended for the square footage, and it didn't even get half of the project covered. Bought a lot more, and finished, but we began to notice that the stuff was soaking into the drywall oddly, and things were telegraphing through, like pencil marks and different mud layers. A couple days later, we began to see some paper delaminations from the drywall. I called in the reps, the paint guys said it was a bad lot of drywall, the drywall guys said it was the primer. I used more of that same lot of drywall on a later job with no problems, with a different primer. We figured out a solution, but it was almost a catastrophe. I won't use Valspar anything willingly now.

[Frank Pratt]

I avoid the house brands in general and Behr in particular. It really is not good paint. BM & SW are the ones I prefer. Well worth the extra bit of cost.

[Mel Fulks]

Perry, the gov paint was probably lead based. Found gov. gallon of the "paste" at a yard sale years ago. Gave it to a friend.

[Jerome Stanek]

We have a SW test area just down the road from us. My son in law works for SW and I get a nice discount.

[Lisa Starr]

Our home's entire 1st floor is done with various colors of SW Duration paint. Our 2nd floor has Behr from the Borg. It was all applied 5-6 years ago, the a difference now is startling. The 1st floor was much easier to get good coverage in the first place and cleans up much more easily. The 2nd floor really needs to be re-done already and fades/marks when you wipe it.

[Frank Pratt]

Just to add a specific complaint about Behr paint, besides poor coverage and washability. My shop walls & ceiling are covered with OSB with latex caulking to help hide the seams. The caulking was left to cure for many days & then covered with Behr primer followed by a coat of semigloss white. Within a couple of weeks I notices the the seams that had been caulked were dirty. The paint over the caulking was ever so slightly tacky & held on to the dust. I applied a second coat to a small area, but that didn't help. Even years later it was still soft over the caulking.

I finally ended up priming the offending areas with Zinsser Bin primer, then a top coat of semigloss. Problem solved. I've never had a paint do that over latex caulking before and certainly not since (cause I won't use Behr anymore)

[Prashun Patel]

I notice the difference between my favorite (Benjamin Moore Regal or Aura) and the Valspar, Behr's I've used in a couple ways:

The BM paint seems to cover more thoroughly after a single coat than do the other two - and I'm not just talking about thinness of the coat so you can see through to the previous coat; I see it in the little white dots you get when the loaded roller starts to run thin. I'll cover a wall with Valspar, only to see those white spots that I missed an hour later. With the BM, I cover a wall and I think I'm going to have to do it twice because I can see lap marks when wet, only to find out an hour later it dried perfectly even.

I think this difference is more noticeable with darker colors too.

I'm cheap, but I do spend for good paint.

[Ole Anderson]

No shortage of opinions here. When comparing paints, Behr vs SW for example, make sure you are comparing apples to apples ie: satin to satin, not semi-gloss to flat. Huge difference in coverage and durability. Remember the old paints, like the cheap ones carried by K-Mart? Those were bad paints. Personally my go-to paints are SW Pro-Classic for trim and cabinets and Behr Premium Plus or Ultra eggshell for walls.

[lowell holmes]

I built houses in a previous life. I used Sherwin Williams and have ever since. I see no reason to change.

My father had a small Napco paint stote and it is good paint.