FOLLOWING UP ON PAINT: THE EXPERT ASKS THE EXPERTS

 

FOLLOWING UP ON PAINT: THE EXPERT ASKS THE EXPERTS

The last time I wrote to you about paint, I made a comparison between paint and beer.  Just as cheap beer is nothing but watered down premium beer, cheap paint is watered down premium paint.  Cheap paint doesn’t last as long, just as the buzz quickly fades from a domestic light beer.  Cheap paint also doesn’t cover as well.  You have to use more of a cheap paint to do the same job you can accomplish with less premium paint.  Beer is the same.  It takes a lot of cheap beer to get that warm fuzzy feeling whereas you can get that same fuzzy feeling with less than a sixer of good beer.  However, if you are like me, you like to test theories yourself so you know for sure.  How would you know I’m not just trying to sell you expensive paint when you could get by just fine and save a few bucks using cheap paint?  I can certainly think of plenty of products where the cheap alternative works just as well.  The only problem with testing paint is that it could take around 20 years to test a theory.  Let’s say you are painting your house and you want to compare the performance of cheap paint to that of premium paint.  First, you try the cheap paint.  You paint your house and wait until the paint starts to come off.  Even cheap paint stays on in the beginning.  Let’s say that after five years it starts to peel off.  Now you have established the longevity of cheap paint.  You repaint your house with premium paint.  It takes 15 years for this paint to start to peel.  So there you go.  You have your answer.  But who has 20 years to test a theory. 

Instead of using 20 years of my own home ownership to find out for sure the difference between cheap and premium paint, I am going to use someone else’s 20 years.   I interviewed three midtown painters with at least 20 years experience.  I asked them each three questions. 1.) How much longer does premium paint last? 2.) How much cheap paint do you have to use to get the same coverage as premium paint? 3.)  Is there really such a thing as paint + primer? 

The third question I asked has to do with paints labeled “paint + primer.”  Almost all paints are now labeled as such.  According to one of the painters I interviewed, it started at Home Depot.  They started labeling their paint as “paint + primer.”  All else equal, consumers are going to pick the paint that is “self priming.”  It wasn’t long before all other paint manufacturers followed suit.  Now, “paint + primer” is on all paints.  So did they actually change the formulation?  Did the manufacturers reformulate all their paints as fast as they changed the labels?  First off, primer is made up primarily of resins which seal bare surfaces and provide something for the paint to stick to.  Paint is made up primarily of pigments which give color and create a durable, washable surface.  If you add additional resins to paint, then it will contain less pigment thereby making it less of a paint and more of a primer.  It seems you can’t be both but I’m not a chemist.  If there is such a thing as both, then why on the back of the paint can do the instructions read, ”coat all bare surfaces before applying paint.”  If the paint is a primer then why would you need to do that?  My guess is that they using a common misconception to their advantage.  Many people think you have to prime a painted surface before applying new paint.  This is not so.   Paint sticks to paint just fine.  If you are painting a new color on a painted surface and you use paint + primer, you won’t have any problems.  The catch is that you wouldn’t have had any problems with regular paint either.  The only way to know for sure if there is any difference between paint and “paint + primer” is to watch the paint manufacturers make the paint.  But since they are not opening their factories to the public and revealing their secret recipe, we will have to rely on our local experts. 

The first painter is Douglas Carlton with 28 years of experience.   Douglas said that premium paint lasts at least 10 years longer than regular paint, and you have to use twice as much cheap paint to get the same coverage you get with premium paint.  He does not buy the “paint + primer” claim.  He had a customer who applied “paint + primer” to a bare wood surface and it came off within a year.   

Paul Howen has 24 years of experience painting houses.  He said that in general, premium paint lasts twice as long as cheap paint.  He has painted two houses next door to each other, one with premium paint, and one with a cheap brand that the customer insisted he use.   The house painted with premium paint still looks good after 18 years.  The other house had to be repainted after 4 years.  Paul says you have to use 3 gallons of cheap paint to cover what you can with 1 gallon of premium.  He also does not buy the paint + primer claim.  He did not notice any change to the paint once the label started reading “paint + primer.”

Tim Stockdale has been in construction for over 40 years but has been painting for only the last 20.  He said you can only count on cheap paint to last 4 – 6 years.   Premium will last at least 15 years.   When asked about coverage he said you can get 2 – 3 times the coverage with premium paint over cheap paint.   He doesn’t know anything about paint + primer.  He said, “I’m old school.  I always prime first, then paint.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.“        

The experts are in agreement.  Premium paint last 2-3 times as long and requires 2–3 times less paint.   Premium paint may cost 2-3 times more, but considering you have to buy 2-3 times more cheap paint, the price difference is a wash.  If you consider the cost of repainting every 5 years instead of every 15, painting with premium paint cost a third as much.   Even if you are painting an apartment you rent that you don’t plan on staying in long, it still makes sense to buy premium paint because you’ll buy a third as much and do a third of the work.  Short of doing your own 20 year test, you’ve done all you can to determine what quality of paint to buy by reading this article.   I will still sell cheap paint because there will always be people who want to pay the smallest amount possible today.  I will see those people three times as often and make three times more money off of them whereas you will have to find other reasons to come to our store.