So I am trying to determine what brand of paint to use for repainting the interior of my house and have gotten a few recommendations (but not about specific brands) and was wondering what you guys think.

I was told that if I plan on painting over one weekend I should try and get a low VOC paint so I dont get high off of the fumes, but am not sure if the price difference is worth it.

I will be in kyle and there are no sherwin williams stores close so Home Depot is the closest store to resupply in a hurry so I was thinking that I would use Behr Brand. This has gotten mixed reviews on the internet where professional painters hate it, but DYI people have less issues.

Any thoughts would be appreciated and I would like to buy the paint samples on tuesday or wednesday so I can see how the colors look on the wall before the weekend of painting.

I believe Consumer Reports has always been very high on Behr paints. You get what you pay for.

Behr from HD is great, THICK paint! I am a stickler for two coats because if I go to the effort to paint I want two coats(you really could get away with one if the colors were similar but I will never admit that to my kids!)

I have used lots of different brands, Glidden, Wallhide, Rustoleum, Valspar, Sherwin-Williams, Olympic, Dutch Boy and many off brands through the years and Behr is indeed probably the best.

I have always had good luck with Benjamin Moore.

Big fan of Benjamin Moore.

I've used Behr a lot and like it. I can live with one coat on light or similar colors but recommend two coats on darker colors.

Try and hold out for sales if you need to buy a lot. Also look at buying 5 gallons buckets if you need a lot of one color.

I like Behr. Painted the entire house with it.

To me Benjamin Moore is hands down the best.

I used Behr on my rental home in Kyle. Worked like a charm.

Just painted several rooms with Behr Premium and one coat was plenty. But, I was only covering the cheap off-white paint put in by the builder. I'm not sure how it does covering other colors.

I will agree with everyone about Behr and one of the colors we COVERED was a light milk chocolate brown going to a soft yellow(Lemon Custard) and we painted two coats...one other room was pale lavender to same yellow and in there yes, one coat would have worked. The third room was light peach and we went to a dark tan(Sahara Somethingorother) and the kids(who granted were painting) started the complaining about overkill of two coats.

No one complained until the end of the second room and all through the third. Switching bedrooms at the same time means the job snow balls and you paint a lot!

Thanks for the advise, I am glad that there have not been any horror stories with bohr brand with yall. I will most likely go with that and just plan to place two coats of paint only to cover the dark existing colors.

Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams are the best but we only buy those when a sale coincides with a painting project.

Most of the time it's Behr and it's wonderful.

I hired a pro to paint a room with Behr and it was gorgeous!! He did only one coat but laid it on thick.

If you do the painting yourself, you will notice instantly that the Sherwin-Williams or Benjamin Moore go on much more smoothly and easily. I'm a SW fan myself because they keep a record of all the colors we use for future reference. I signed up for e-mail from them and get some pretty substantial discounts on paint from time to time.

The frugal lady says Walmart works just fine. Our current home was painted almost 100% with Walmart "color place" paint. It still looks great. I'm sure the Behr is better, but I'll change my mind and repaint before we notice the difference.

Just my 2 cents.

If you can catch the paint store's during sales, they are the best value. Sherwin Williams has been running a lot of good sales lately, almost every month. They also just started carrying HGTV's line of paint and colors schemes.

Benjamin Moore. All other paints are inferior.

The neatest thing about the Benny Moore is that it's got different grades you can buy that will give different results.

If you're painting really dark/extremely tinted colors, you want to go with the Aura because it's going to pick up and show the pigment better.

If you're painting a high traffic area (hallway, kid's bedroom, bathroom, kitchen), you can paint with Aquavelvet (I always use Eggshell) and not only will it resist dings/knocks, but it's scrubbable either with water/rag or with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. There was a famous incident when I was about three where I decided that we needed some additional wall art and also decided that 'crayola scribbles' was the new designer look, and did most of the upstairs before my mom caught me. It scrubbed right off, no need to repaint or touch up.

Ceilings, low traffic areas like living rooms, and places that will not get splattered can be painted with Super Spec, although I will warn that it's not as easy to apply nor is it as durable in sunlit areas. It's a 3 mil paint as opposed to a 5 mil paint like the aquavelvet is.

Other paints I have tried (sorry Dubi) is Wal-mart, Sherwin Williams, Olympia, and Glidden. All three 'chalked out' in rooms that received a lot of sunlight ... pretty much in order of price/reputation... the Wal-mart chalked out first within six months, Sherwin Williams chalked out in a year, Olympia was a lost cause almost from the beginning, and Glidden was even with the Sherwin-Williams. Haven't tried Behr, but they're supposedly not that bad. I just hate painting rooms, and only want to do it once every five years or so. The Benny Moore outlasts the time period I've ever lived in a house for.

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For trim/cabinets, I *always* use Benjamin Moore Impervo Satin (oil) paint, typically in an off-white color and not a bright white. Oil's easier to work when you're doing trim for three reasons. First, it doesn't dry as fast and it self-levels the brush strokes back out as it hardens over the next month or so. Second, it doesn't ball up as you're dragging it along the trim like latex will... especially when it's hot out. Third, it doesn't give you that 'sticky' effect that latex has when two pieces painted with the same type of paint are stuck together, i.e. a door to it's frame. The caveats are that you need a solvent (mineral spirits) to clean your brush, you need to make sure your brushes are the right kind, and you need to prime a bare wood surface with a latex primer of some sort before you paint with the oil.

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Interior wall paint, I always use Eggshell. (Flat -ONLY- for ceilings, and we paint our ceilings a weird blue-grey color because it seems to true up colors a little better... OC-64 is the benjamin moore color for it.) Trim (oil) always gets Satin; same with wood finishes -- Minwax polyurethane -- you'll be disappointed if you use semi-gloss, much less gloss. Exterior is always low-lustre, but never flat. Flat paint on the outside of a house will chalk out in the extreme sun that we get down here in TX. It will also give mildew/dirt a great anchor to build up on the outside of your house.

[This message has been edited by superspeck (edited 4/26/2011 9:36a).]

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just plan to place two coats of paint only to cover the dark existing colors.

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Better would be to paint a coat of Kilz on first and then paint one or two coats over that.

Thanks superspeck for your comments.

I know that I will have to paint a primer in one room that was the kids room from the previous owner since they did a mural.

If you're not sure what kind of paint was used for the mural, I'd suggest a coat of Zinsser BINZ first. It's a shellac-based primer. Stinks to high heaven, but it will stick to just about anything and give you a good base to start from.

I agree DO NOT PUT FLAT ON YOUR WALLS. I had eggshell before but this house has flat. It dings SO easily and shows scuffs and is tricky to clean.

Another thing not mentioned - don't buy cheap brushes.

If you use cheap paint and cheap brushes you'll end up going through so much paint that the cost would be equivalent to buying high quality paint and brushes to start with - but it will take twice as long to get good even coverage.

Also this: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100170461/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

That pail is one of the greater convenience inventions of the last 100 years. Load up on the liners for it.

You can buy Behr if you want, but I wouldn't touch it. If you want quality results, stick with Sherwin Williams and Ben Moore. I have a commercial account at the local SW place and about all I did to get that was tell them I was a commercial painter! That gave me a discount off the paint right there.

You can buy the various tools at those stores, or at Lowes/HD. You can also probably get by with the primers sold at those stores. ALWAYS prime -- I don't care if you're covering the same or a lighter color. You will be so much happier with the results.

If you decide you want to spray, either spend the money on an actual pro model or go rent one. Even the consumer models of Graco and Titan, the 2 big boys in the sprayer market, will not give you good performance. But if you do spray, you're going to take the extra time laying down protection (unless its new or remodeled construction) that it may not be worthwhile. Learning to cut in corners, top and bottom, is not difficult.

Fyi, SW has a free iPhone app which allows you to snap a picture of a color you like, and the app will give you the RGB values. I think it'll also list the SW colors closely matching the picture.

Benny Moore has the same sort of iPhone app, although neither BM or SW are very accurate. Better is to spend the $20 to get the entire book of chips from your local reseller.

Do yourself a favor and go first class with Benjamin Moore with Sherwin Williams a distant second. Don't be one of those cheap a---- that gets Behr or paint from Wal-Mart. Benjamin Moore is an extremely quality product that lasts.

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Benny Moore has the same sort of iPhone app, although neither BM or SW are very accurate. Better is to spend the $20 to get the entire book of chips from your local reseller.

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Good point. The app only gets you in the "ballpark".

The pros all use BM or SW for a reason. It's not that much more expensive and it's so much easier to paint with...so I recall. Now I just let the pros do it unless it's a small job.

For trim use Sherwin-Williams Pro Classic latex acrylic paint. Painted all the trim, doors and cabinets in my current house in it, it goes on smooth with a brush, or you can cut it 10-25% with water and spray it. It has held up well on the trim, but not as well on the kitchen cabinets.
Also fairly low VOC's using my non-scientific nose.

How thick Behr is makes it a pain to paint with.

Behr

Something nobody has mentioned is the use of the low VOC paint. I can tell you from numerous experiences that the low VOC paint SUCKS!!!!!

Many people will tell you that it works the same and doesn't stink so go for it. However, I can tell you after painting adjacent walls with the regular stuff and that crap that it doesn't cover as well.

Additionally, I worked with equipment manufacturers that were forced to switch the low VOC paint due to air quality concerns. The result is that machines built 30 years ago still have their original paint on them, while machines built 2 years ago have it flaking off.

Ultimately, the low VOC paint just isn't a quality product. There is a reason that they used the VOC in the paint, and that all paint hasn't been switched to that crap.

Agree with CalAg. Since the era of Low VOCs has dawned, I've changed a lot of the ways that I'm painting. Fresh drywall gets a coat of PVA primer, a coat or two of the thickest primer I can get my hands on, and then a color coat. I used to just prime once and paint.

Back on the other hand, it's better than all the cancers and stuff that the VOCs can cause.