A Decorator’s Website O’Connor’s Painting Follows

Young House Love is a fun blog website written by a husband and wife team  chronicling their DYI home renovation and redecoration. They offer some great tips on color. Check out this current article on working with color swatches.  Here at O’Connor’s Painting Service we always like to pass along resources that might give our clients inspiration to add a little color to their lives.  This hot summer has us all spending more time indoors. Now is a great time to paint those interior walls.

Project Behr Paint-Part II Premium Plus Ultra

The Behr Premium Plus Ultra line provides paint and primer in one coat, and provides superior coverage with fewer applications. Typically this line of paint is better for darker colors. This self priming paint can, in most instances, cover in just 2 coats when going over dark colors vs. 3 or 4 coat that other brands of paints need for proper coverage. For example when covering a bold color like hot pink the Behr Ultra product covered the pink in 2 coats saving time and money in material expense vs. the Behr Premium Plus product discussed in a previous posting.

Behr Premium Plus is a different type of paint than
Behr Premium Plus Ultra

Once you choose Behr Premium Plus Ultra for your project, the next step is choosing your sheen. The following information on Behr Ultra sheen can offer you guidance.

Behr Premium Plus Ultra Interior Flat Enamel
This paint and primer in one has a 3% sheen level. It is washable; however, in order to touch up you must paint from wall to wall. This paint can not be used to simply cover a small area or spot. It is easy to clean and is scuff resistant. This paint has a low sheen finish with high sheen performance.

Behr Premium Plus Ultra Interior Eggshell Enamel
This paint and primer in one has a 25% sheen level. This product is washable, but again, for a touch up you must paint from wall to wall. Please note that the higher the sheen level the more apparent imperfections will be on walls where drywall meets drywall.  It is a 100% acrylic latex product that provides outstanding durability, scrub ability, coverage and mildew resistance. 

Behr Premium Plus Ultra Interior Satin Enamel
This paint and primer in one has a 35% sheen level. This product is washable, but again a touch up includes a wall to wall paint job. It offers a pearl-like sheen that is stain, water and mildew resistant. It is ideal for use in high traffic areas and on surfaces where moisture, mildew or fungus growth may be a problem.

Behr Premium Plus Ultra Semi-Gloss Enamel
This paint and primer in one has a 50% sheen level. It is washable, but if marks cannot be removed through wiping then you will have to paint from wall to wall. It is 100% acrylic latex product provides a radiant, sleek sheen and is easy to clean. It provides a durable finish that protects against moisture, mildew and stains.

Colors, Colors, Colors – Help!

When it comes to interior painting it can feel like an overwhelming task when you go to pick your colors. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of paint swatch cards are available to choose from which can test your decision making skills. Will you go with Sherwin Williams Antique White or Simple White? Once you have picked a family of colors, then comes the challenge of coordinating those colors.

To help with your hunt for the perfect colors to paint your walls, trim and ceiling, O’Connor’s Painting recommends the following websites.

House Beautiful - This site associated with the magazine of the same name has a great tool called “Paint Brush” which allows you to pick a type of room and virtualy paint the walls, ceiling and trim. The colors you can choose from come from the Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore color palette, paint brands recommended by O’Connor’s Painting Service.

Benjamin Moore  - Benjamine Moore Paints has created an application called “Personal Color Viewer” which allows you to upload an actual digital picture of your room for you to try out colors. This is a great way to avoid those typical samples of paint  home owners brush on their walls trying to get a feel for a color.

Sherwin Williams – Color Visualizer is the product created by Sherwin Williams to help homeowners try their over 1500 colors in room scenes.  They also have to tool just to explore the Sherwin Williams collection of colors. Pick a color you like and drag and drop into your “favorites” to print out and take to the store when picking up samples. Sherwin Williams has also just introduced ColorSnap for iPhone. Its a free application you can download to your iPhone which you can use to take a picture of a color you like and Sherwin Williams will match the color in the photo to one of their paint colors and coordinating palette.

So get ready and start choosing your hue. Good luck!