I'm renting an apartment, and the manager has kindly offered to have maintenance paint it any color(s) I like if I supply the paint. However, this generosity obviously does not apply to applying a second coat; that's significant extra labor.
The apartment is currently painted a typical off-white apartment color throughout (flat in most places, semi-gloss in kitchen and bath). The exact color is Glidden Swiss Coffee.
I'm not going nuts with dark colors or anything, but I do want to choose a paint that is virtually guaranteed to cover in one coat. After reading horror stories of Behr, I've decided I probably shouldn't go with their paint, but for an example, the darkest color I'd be using would be something like their Rye (310F-4):
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I'm willing to spring for the good stuff, as it's obviously cheaper than painting twice.
The ceilings, by the way, are also painted off-white. So I also need a ceiling paint that covers well.
Good mold/mildew resistance would also be nice, as I'm in the Pacific Northwest.
You have no control here supplying the paint , they can always say " It needed 2 coats " and charge you . Let them get a color and paint that will cover so you have no worry of a BS charge and just pay them for paint.
Wife was "finding" the right color for familyroom walls and after 3 Qts. Sherwin Williams she bought a Qt. of Behr "paint". A really pathetic comparison of the small swatches on the wall, it would take
3-5 coats of Behr to match the cover>I'm not going nuts with dark colors or anything, but I do want to
Picking a specific paint that is the best is tough. They seem to change faster than Detroit changes faster than computers. Any really good paint should be fine, assuming proper prep as well as application.
I can't offer any specific suggestions since I haven not painted for some time. Also some paints seem to have different formula in different areas.
Your asking here is one possible source. Local professionals is another and publications like Consumer Reports is yet another. For CR I caution everyone to read the entire story, not just the ratings.
Despite quality paints, I always need to apply two coats. You could apply a primer and have it tinted to the finish coat. Primer paints are less expensive. You can add mildewcide packets to both primer and paint.
Be also advised that when you move out, there may be an extra charge for repainting the apartment back to its original color. More than likely, it will take two coats to cover your darker paint. When I moved out of my last apartment in 1984, I had to pay $200 extra to have the apartment repainted from my personally applied, custom gold and terra cotta, to the original basic off-white.
If you choose a color which is significantly different than the current color, then the best paint in the world will not cover in one coat.
That said, you should look to what the professionals in your area use. They go to a paint store. Some of them probably go to Sherwin Williams, but the rest are all going to a place that you might not even know of.
Look in the yellow pages. The take a drive tomorrow morning at about
7:30 AM. When you find the paint store that has all the trucks sitting in the lot, go there. (If you wait till 8, you're screwed -- they will all be out on the job.)
Then tell the store that you want their BEST interior paint. And don't flinch when you hear the price.
Not true. I get up rather early and go to bed before dark. I wanted my room dark so I chose a dark blue. This went over the builders white. I bought two coats worth. After one coat, it was clear that it covered very well. The problem was I knocked over a gallon in the middle of the floor (now under a oriental rug). The result is only three walls have two coats. Five years now and I can't tell which one only has one coat. In this case it was Dutch Boy and I even had some Wal-Mart house brand that was cheap do a great job in another room. I would not expect either brand to be the same today.
I've always had good results with Benjamin Moore after a painter recommended it to me for the same reason as you. I wanted to get by with one coat. One thing to keep in mind though is the age of the existing paint. The older an existing paint job is, the more porus it becomes. When it is more porus the walls absorb more paint. Consequently, on a very old paint job (10 years) a second coat may be unavoidable. In that case you may want to buy extra paint and slip the maintenance guy a few bucks to put it on thick.
I also recommend at least an eggshell finish as it stays cleaner longer.
The first paragraph is bad advice, and the second is just plain false. The highest cost of painting is labor, and then there is the paint. If you buy cheap paint that needs 2 coats, then you'll pay just as much as for more expensive paint that covers in one, but it will take twice as long. Some colors will not cover in one coat because of the nature of the pigment - bright reds for example are "clear". Many other colors are different.
Don't listen to anyone who tells you to stay away from a particular brand. Virtually all brands make cheap paint. For example, look at Sherwin Williams.
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they tell you their Style Perfect paint is crap. Now look at their SuperPaint - 5 stars for coverage and hiding. Note that it is expensive (100% acrylic), but it is not their most expensive. It is just their best covering and will cover most colors in one coat. It's not a question of putting "that much paint on at once" - it's a question of putting on paint that is highly opaque, and that's what this 100% acrylic paint is. Now if you want a low VOC paint, you have to get Harmony, which is also expensive. But it's different priorities.
Other companies have similar lines - buy a company's best paint for what you want to accomplish. Again, don't listen to anyone who says "don't buy Sherwin Williams (or Benjamin Moore or whoever) because their paint sucks! There is no such thing as "Sherwin Williams" paint. There is only SuperPaint, StylePerfect, etc.
Very old is 10 years? I don't know many people that paint after less than 10 years, most probably don't paint more often than 15-20 years once they get the color they like.
The room that I use as an office had the original flat, porus paint for 25 years and it covered in one coat, although I admit the new paint was nearly the same color but semigloss. All of the other rooms had been painted in a semigloss at least 15 years ago and they all covered nicely in one coat with a near similar color. One coat might not have worked if going from one dark color to another. All were painted with Gliden paint.
Ahh, at last someone understands that I want to take maximum advantage of the free labor, since that's the expensive part! I'm going to be staying in this place for the next two or three years, and I'm really, _really_ sick of off-white.
I worked in the Sears paint department twenty years ago, when I was in high school and college, and even then we certainly had paints that would cover well in a single coat as long as the difference in color was not too extreme. I remember my dad painting with Lucite even further back, and the only time he needed more than one coat was when the new house we'd just moved into had closets that had inexplicably been painted sh*t brown. With all the negativity here, I was beginning to wonder what had happened to cause the quality of paint to decline so precipitously in the past two decades! I mean, I know American industry ain't what it used to be, but still...
Mainly I wanted to know, if I shouldn't be buying Behr Premium Plus at Home Depot, and from what I was reading I probably shouldn't, what should I be buying instead to have the best chance of one-coat coverage? "Save your money toward a house" is not really an answer to that question. I'm already doing that, anyway. (For reasons that are not really anyone's business but mine, I've decided that a couple years from now will be a much better time for me to buy than now; yes, even with interest rates going up. But I want to move out of the place I'm living now, which is small and beginning to accumulate neighbors who scream obscenities at each other at 7 AM, and I found a great deal on a bigger place with a lake view in a nice complex much closer to work.)
I'm not doing anything extreme -- I'm planning to use light or midtone shades, fairly neutral colors with relatively slight tints; light shades for most of the walls, and slightly darker shades for a few feature/accent walls. Since I can't change the carpet or paint the doors or trim, staying away from extremes seems the wisest course to me, and it'll also give me the widest range of options for furniture, decorating, etc. The living room will be a golden tan; one bedroom will be a greenish-brown, the other (my home office) will be a sort of taupe color. At least the various rooms will have different "feels" even if none of the colors is really that far removed from beige.
So I visited a Sherwin-Williams store and a Benjamin Moore dealer today (having collected swatches from Glidden, Dutch Boy, and Parker earlier), and found I generally liked Benjamin Moore's colors best, so after John Grabowski's reccomendation I'll probably go with their Regal Matte -- with one exception. Because they have a particular aqua color I like that Benjamin Moore's system can't quite match (every system seems to have a few such Achilles heel colors), it'll be Dutch Boy semi-gloss in the bathroom. This is also the darkest color I'll be using, so it's the most likely to have coverage problems. Luckily, there's not much exposed wall to paint in there, so if I have to do a second coat myself, no problem.
how is it bad advice to suggest not dumping money into a place that isnt yours? if you rent a car and dont think it has enough power, do you pay to take it to the mechanic for a tune up?
the second paragraph says nothing about costs. simply that you probably arent going to get a good paint job with one coat which is absolutely true. sure it looks great at first. but it dont last. dont believe me? next time you paint, do one wall somewhere in a back room witn two coats, and the rest with one coat. then look at it after a year compared to a wall with two coats on it.
of course the highest cost is labor. but its not his place. why buy 10 year paint for a place you plan to live in for 2-3 years?
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