Paint brands: Can you really not match Benjamin Moore colors?

[Anonymous]

Right on the color swatches it says that the color cannot be matched. What is your experience? Our painter wants to use Duron instead of Benjamin Moore. Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Right on the color swatches it says that the color cannot be matched. What is your experience? Our painter wants to use Duron instead of Benjamin Moore. Thoughts?

That is incorrect. The couple that runs the DIY web-site Young House Love http://www.younghouselove.com/ color match the BM colors to Olympic no-VOC paints that they buy at Lowe's. They do this for all of the paints that they use in their house and they have fine results.

[Anonymous]

anyone have any real life examples with Duron?

[Anonymous]

No but I can tell you the rooms I painted in Duron I'm now having to re-paint b/c they did not hold up nearly as well as my Benjamin Moore rooms. If you're willing to pay for Benjamin Moore then I'd go for it. I'm wondering if your painter wants to use Duron b/c they get a contractors rate and then upsell it to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Right on the color swatches it says that the color cannot be matched. What is your experience? Our painter wants to use Duron instead of Benjamin Moore. Thoughts?

BS. We used Benjamin Moore colors color-matched in Behr paint throughout our house and had no issues.

[Anonymous]

My painters used Benjamin Moore colors matched to Sherwin William paints... they got a great rate on the SW paint and the results looked very good to me. Definitely a big savings. You could always get samples from both BM and Duron to make sure the match is good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No but I can tell you the rooms I painted in Duron I'm now having to re-paint b/c they did not hold up nearly as well as my Benjamin Moore rooms. If you're willing to pay for Benjamin Moore then I'd go for it. I'm wondering if your painter wants to use Duron b/c they get a contractors rate and then upsell it to you.

Ditto. Originally I used Duron and it just didn't wear well. I have now switched to Benjamin Moore and it is so much better. It is more expensive, but the cost of the paint itself is small compared to the labor costs of having someone paint your house.

[Anonymous]

My experience is that you can get paint colors matched to Benjamin Moore that are very, very close, but not exactly the same. In other words, if you hold the swatch up to the finished wall, it will probably look the same, but if you try to touch up a wall that was painted in Benjamin Moore with a matched Duron paint (or whatever) it won't match exactly.

FWIW, we've painted several houses ourselves, and we always use Benjamin Moore for the trim, because it really does cover better and is more durable. We use Lowe's brand for the walls, because it really doesn't make that much difference there (unless you're painting a stairwell, or some other high-traffic area).

[Anonymous]

We decided to use Sherwin Williams for our house. Having painted my last house with Olympic, I think it worth more money. After several years, the Olympic paint just didn't hold up well. Despite a primer coat and two coats of Olympic, after 3-4 years, the colors wore unevenly and wiped off too easily. I had something spatter on the wall and just a rag with water thinned the color for Olympic. We've painted our new house with Harmony for the no-VOC label and after 5-6 years, it still looks new and holds up much better. Also love the SW customer service. The guys at our local SW store know us and replace even custom paints for any small problem. No question asked, they just toss the can to the recycle pile and make us up a new can. It's also nice that they have all of our purchased tied to our frequent purchaser card and if we need more of a color, they have it all on record. We've done all of our own painting and we have a big house.

[Anonymous]

We did it with Sherwin Williams and it turned out great. SW is higher quality than duron so closer to BM in quality. Ask your painter if he will do SW. He probably wants to do Duron because he gets a discount at the store, but SW and Duron is made by the same company so he should get the same discount.

[Anonymous]

I like Duron. I have painted using both Duron and Behr, sorry I haven't used Bej. Moore. Duron is a regional company, not sold all over the US so it is hard to get comparisons about the paint.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right on the color swatches it says that the color cannot be matched. What is your experience? Our painter wants to use Duron instead of Benjamin Moore. Thoughts?

That is incorrect. The couple that runs the DIY web-site Young House Love http://www.younghouselove.com/ color match the BM colors to Olympic no-VOC paints that they buy at Lowe's. They do this for all of the paints that they use in their house and they have fine results.

LOVE that website, and DH and I do the exact same thing. I wish more brands were no-VOC so we didn't have to drive all the way to the Lowe's or pay a gazillion dollars for the other brands (Olympic is the best-priced no-VOC I've found).

[Anonymous]

You can match BM to any other major paint brand. Duron historically isn't as well wearing a paint as BM, but it's much more about how it's applied than the material.

[Anonymous]

SW and Duron are the same thing. Duron was bought out by SW about 5 years ago but they maintain the name on stores. It is all the exact same paint.

[Anonymous]

Duron is not great. We us the paint and primer from behr at home depot and the coverage is amazing, also low voc. Lower if you get the premium plus. You can't fully color match anyone's paint because each company has a different base so the color tint takes differently even if the matching people know the formula, but it will be close.