Favorite paint brands and colors?

[SASM]

We are going to be buying our first home this year ~ YAY!! Watching HGTV and looking at my blah white walls is getting me so excited about painting. So...I just thought that I'd ask if anyone has any favorite paint brands and colors. I know that colors are clearly a preference (plus lighting can change then, etc) but I am just curious about colors since there are an insane amount to choose from. TIA!

[o_mom]

For the value, I really like Behr Premium Plus Enamel at Home Depot. We have done most of our rooms with it and it holds up well, washes and the colors have worked. They have a rebate just about every holiday ($5 off /gallon, $20 off 5 gallons).

For our trim I use Sherwin Williams "Super Paint". Mainly because the first room we painted, I used that and it has been much easier to just keep buying the exact same trim paint than to try and match it from somewhere else. I really liked the Super Paint we used on the walls, but it is pricey and once we had Home Depot here I switched to Behr. I don't think the Super Paint has washed as well as the Behr.

The best thing I have found is to buy a quart of the color you pick and paint a 3'x3' square on the wall. Look at it at different times of day, with different lighting and you will get a better idea of what it will look like than the paint chip. Some places have small samples you can get - Behr has them online for $6.95 ($5.95 for 2 or more), but only in limited colors and finishes.

[jenmcadams]

We love BM paints...the quality is great (and has always been better than Behr for us, but maybe I just picked better colors with BM). I love that they have several hundred samples jars available (most popular colors) -- I also love that they recently partnered with Pottery Barn, so there's a new color palette with each new PB catalog...It helps me to see the colors on the walls with furniture, etc.

I'm definitely a sample jar sucker :) but I really think it's important to get a few shades of the color you're looking for and paint them on the wall to see which one works best

[kcimato]

I will second Benjamine Moore paint and colors. I just tried their new Aura paint and love it. It really is beautiful on the walls. The Affinity color palette that goes with it is outstanding. At first I thought it was just ok but you are supposed to choose any color and all the colors on the chart will coordinate with it. Also do go and get the jar color samples it really helps although it can change with the different lighting during the day.There is also a site called
www. colorchart.org where you get a color from one brand and it will come up with other brands that are a close match.

[SnuggleBuggles]

I love the Laura Ashley colors from Lowe's. I get a million swatches of dif't brands but I always seem to be drawn most to those. We just get the Lowe's brand paint in eggshell. We couldn't agree on the baby's room paint color so we tried out 2 dif't colors from the sample sizes and that was great. They sell for $4. We painted our living room Taupe 2 by L.A. but in photos it looks so washed out as a backgroud. Taupe 3 would have been better just for some more richness. I like darker, more saturated colors though.

Beth

[LarsMal]

I love the colors at Restoration Hardware, but they are pretty pricey. I've taken the colors to Home Depot and had them matched using Behr paint. I really like Behr paint.

The house we moved into was done in Benjamin Moore. Great colors and quality.

Either one is a safe bet, IMO!

**Pottery Barn does color swatches, too. Great colors, and I think it's BM paint.

[katydid1971]

I have used both BM and Behr and other brands but these two are my favorites. They both cover very well, I like the washable flat paint from BM for places like kids rooms. It is very expensive so try some samples before you buy large amounts. In our bathrooms and kitchen I have used the Behr and it has worked out great. At my home depot they said they can make any of the BM colors. I agree that the Pottery barn colors are a great place to start, especially for those of us who aren't the best decorators. FYI I hated both sherwin williams and dutch boy although I like their plastic paint buckets, much neater than the regualr paint buckets that BM and Behr use.

[ThreeofUs]

We liked Ecospec, which I believe is a Benj Moore brand. On the plus side, it does a great job of coverage and holds some fantastic colors, and has almost no smell or VOC release.

As we learned, however, you have to do a really good prep job before putting it on or it peels. This might just be a problem of our old paint, which admittedly is peeling in the whole house (another story about idiot previous homeowners), but I doubt it.

[Marisa6826]

Benjamin Moore, most definitely.

What colours are you looking for? There were a couple threads about a year ago about this and there were some really good answers - I think maybe Corie started them??

-m

[LD92599]

Not too light, not to dark. Nice contrast w/ white trim, etc.

Love it!

I'm going to be in the market for new colors for our upstairs rooms this year, so i'll wait here!

Oh and soft jazz for our bathroom. I found towels I loved and then matched them up to the swatches - soft jazz is blue.

[KrisM]

We used to always use Behr from Home Depot. Then, we used Sherwin Williams for something and it goes on so much nicer than the Behr!

For $10, I got the paint color book from SW and that helped a lot. Then, we bought sampe quarts for about $5 each - not quite the quality of the "real" paint, but the color. We painted large sheets of poster board so we could have multiple colors in muliple places and test for how things looked with the couch, etc.

Then, because DH is a bit geeky, we photoshopped our colors into our rooms :).

[american_mama]

Lowe's sell sample jars in ALL the paint colors, all their collections (Olympic, Valspar, Laura Ashley, Nickolodeon, Shore Living, several more). It is the only place I have found that has samples available in every color. I would like to try Benjamin Moore sometime, but I once asked about 8 different shades of pink I was considering, and they didn't have samples in any of them.

Lowe's will also sell primer tinted to match your paint for no additional charge. Our contractor said if you are painting unpainted drywall, he notices an improved look if you do tinted primer and then 1 (or maybe it was 2) coats of the paint on top. It would also be important if you were using a dark shade.

We have Lowe's Valspar paint in several rooms in our basement and the one bedroom we have painted. We were first time painters and had no problem applying it or living with it. I will probably be painting DD1's room this weekend with Lowe's Olympic paint (their cheaper paint) and I am curious if it will go on any differently.

[lil_acorn]

All painters we have worked with love Benjamin Moore and don't think very highly of Behr. They say Sherwin Williams would be 2nd choice behind BM.

[mikearge]

In the past, I've tried Valspar (Lowes), Behr (Home Depot) and Sears brands . . . while they're cheaper, I found that the premium brands (Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore) are really worth the extra $. First, they cover much better so you don't need to add so many coats of paint. So while you could save a few $ on a cheaper brand, there really is no savings if you need to buy extra paint to put on extra coats. It addition, the premium brands don't seem to fade as much as the bargain brands.

So far I love SW Superpaint. It covers great and usually only needs one coat. As for color, you can bring them any color swatch you find (in other paint brands or even a piece of cloth you want to match) and they can computer match it. In addition they have a Duration line of paint which lets you simply wipe off any crayon, marker etc. stains with just a quick wipe. Great for a child's room. (Also low VOCS!)

As for cost, I have consistently found coupons for SW, so it ends up not being any more expensive. Here's one for 20% off- http://baton.com/common/sherwin.html

Sorry for the long post, but I'm painting the nursery tomorrow, so this is all right in the front of my mind.

[amandabea]

I also highly recommend Benjamin Moore paint -- fantastic colors and paint quality. A close second is Dunn Edwards premium paints, but I think they are more of a favorite among painters in Southern California, Nevada, and Arizona. I've heard Sherwin Williams is also very good. I've had horrible experience with Behr, even their premium paints, and I would never use or recommend them to anyone.
Amanda

[o_mom]

In the past, I've tried Valspar (Lowes), Behr (Home Depot) and Sears brands . . . while they're cheaper, I found that the premium brands (Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore) are really worth the extra $. First, they cover much better so you don't need to add so many coats of paint. So while you could save a few $ on a cheaper brand, there really is no savings if you need to buy extra paint to put on extra coats. It addition, the premium brands don't seem to fade as much as the bargain brands.

So far I love SW Superpaint. It covers great and usually only needs one coat.

...


I have yet to find any paint, SW, BM, etc that will really cover in one coat, no matter what they say. I was actually washing the walls in the kids' bathroom yesterday (we are getting ready to sell). It was painted with SW SuperPaint, one coat, and there are definate thin spots and you can see where any repairs were made, even though we primed them. I don't think it was bad paint, but did not live up to their claims of only needing one coat. The Behr paints have covered well in two coats, the same as SW. I haven't noticed any fading on any of them, but it's hard to say over long term what would happen.

I will say that the SW ProClassic that we got for the Kitchen cabinets was a total PITB to put on. It does not flow at all and dries almost instantly. This means that you end up with puddles of thick paint and lots of brush marks.

[KHF]

ITA with SnuggleBuggles earlier in the thread...I love the Laura Ashley colors from Lowe's. Our laundry room is Taupe 3 and our bedroom is Taupe 4. We love them. It's a very rich color, but not too overpowering for medium to small rooms. I'm probably going to paint our great room in Taupe 3 in the spring.

We also have a LA color in our kitchen that is called terra cotta, I think. I've had it in there for 5 years and I'm still not sick of it.

We use the Valspar paint at Lowe's.