Tips for purchasing paint and painting supplies from a Washington, DC/Northern Virginia area Contracting Company
Navigating the coatings industry (“coating” = paint, stain, sealant, wallpaper, etc) can be a little overwhelming for the beginner. This is mostly because what seems like a simple product to the uninformed consumer (aka, paint), is actually an intricately engineered concoction, and the variety of different mixtures on the market is actually pretty wide. What kind of store you go to determines what kinds of products you will be offered, and what kind of product you select will go a long way toward determining the quality of your final paint job.
Paint can typically be purchased either from a general home improvement store, like Home Depot, or from a specialized paint store, like Sherwin Williams or Benjamin Moore. While they have obvious overlap, these two types of store have different primary goals, which translates to a different selection of paint products.
The purpose of a store like Home Depot is to provide a one-stop-shop for homeowners who want to do home improvement projects themselves. Typically speaking, do-it-yourselfers have a lower budget, less expertise, and less equipment than professional contractors. With this target audience in mind, generalized home improvement stores tend to provide cheap to medium-luxury brands of paint, a comprehensive collection of equipment, and simpler, more straightforward tools. Most signature brands of paint that are sold in specialty paint stores are not offered in general home improvement stores, because they are proprietary. So stores like Home Depot carry the more generic, widely distributed brands of paint. While these brands of paint will do the job, they do not have the extra care taken into the engineering that you will find at a specialty store. They will also likely not cost as much.
The purpose of a specialty paint store is to sell paint, period. Paint stores sell specific brands, which have been engineered to excel in various arenas. High durability or opacity, waterproofing or flameproofing, mildew-resistance, low-VOC content, bold color retention, high clean ability, and custom finishes are all examples of the special purposes for which designer paints can be engineered. Paint stores also sometimes sell a type of paint known as “contractor grade”. Contractor grade paint, ironically enough, is actually extremely low – quality, intended for covering large areas in new construction. Since specialty paint stores sell to contractors as well as homeowners (and that includes general contractors working with new construction as well as high-craftsmanship refinishing contractors like Blue Door Painters), the types of paint offered are focused on very specific goals, from the cheap new-construction paints to the extremely reliable designer paints that a refinishing contractor can stake his reputation on.
So when you are shopping for paint, you should consider the level of quality you are looking for, as well as your budget and whether you are going to have help in the execution. Understanding what kind of paint is sold where is a solid first step toward navigating the complicated world of paint products.