Hey Friends! This is not a post I expected to write. Spectrum Paint is our favorite paint provider. We love their story, the family behind the business, as well as the unique services and specialty paints they offer up (which I’ve talked about here, here, and here.)
What I didn’t think was a big deal was the “normal,” everyday wall paints. My thoughts were “I will buy wall paint from Spectrum because I like them, not because I think Benjamin Moore paint is better than say, Home Depot’s Behr paint. To me, paint was paint. Yes, that’s what I thought until I used this. . .
So here’s how it all went down. For the past year or so, I’ve had other people paint walls for me. It saves me time and the client money to have an assistant of mine paint rather than charging my hourly rate to do something that doesn’t require a whole lot of design skill. So, I haven’t personally painted a wall in a long time. When it came time to start transforming Anthony’s Man/Media Room, I made my regular calls to see if anyone was available to help me out. Everyone was busy this time around and because I am super impatient and didn’t want to wait for schedules to open up, I decided I would go ahead and paint the space myself.
I called up Spectrum and said, “I am going from a beige to a dark, dark gray and I want a paint that will allow me to do as few coats as possible. To me, saving time is more important than saving money on the actual paint. What would you suggest?” The sales associate recommended the “Aura” line by Benjamin Morre. So I placed my order, went to pick up the paint, and headed to Anthony’s house.
You can see in these “before” pictures below how light the beige was that would be covering. . .
The color I was transitioning to was Benjamin Moore’s Graphite.
The difference in those two colors is pretty vast and I was expecting that at least two coats would be needed.
As soon as I started putting paint on the wall, I could feel the difference in quality from paint that I had previously used. The Aura went on so smoothly. . . it was extra creamy or something. It’s super hard to describe how the paint felt different, but it was. Like I said, I never expected to write this post but after my experience with the paint, I thought you guys should know about it as well! I am happy to report, I only had to do one coat to completely cover the beige. One coat!!!! The time it saved me was totally worth the extra money I spent on the quality product. AND I only used two gallons to do the entire room, including the ceiling!!! That is some awesome coverage y’all!
Here’s how the room looks now. . .
Of course it’s still far from finished, but you can see how the Graphite gray will make for a much better media/man room backdrop!
If I saved even an hour of my time by buying the Aura rather than a lower quality paint, I recouped my costs. I am quite sure I saved much more than an hour. I estimate I saved at least 5 hours! Now, that’s a good investment! :)As you can see, springing for the high quality stuff was totally worth it! Especially if your life leaves you strapped for time.
Are you interested in how the rest of Anthony’s room is going to shape up? Here’s the design board I put together for him. . .
It’s going to be fun project!! ‘Til tomorrow!
PS- Find a Spectrum Paint near you by clicking here!
Thank you for sharing! We are literally about to paint our bedroom BM Graphite this weekend. Going from a darker beige than your pictures. I am not def splurging on the Aura paint line… if I can get away with one coat I will be so happy!
I love Aura paint too. The first time I plunked down my $$ for a gallon I about choked, but then when I experienced the difference in the paint I quickly determined the paint {or I} was worth the additional cost. I’ve used both a dark paint to cover a light color {1 coat with Aura} and a light paint (BM Hazy Skies which is an Off-White) to cover a very vibrant deep tone turquoise and for full coverage it did take 2 coats but if I had needed to skimp by with 1 coat I probably could have. All that and no paint smell either 🙂 Anthony’s room looks so great, I love the sophisticated combo of the graphite walls + camel furnishings.
Aura by Benny Moore as well as Pittsburgh Manor Hall are both worth their weight in gold!! I never advise people to use cheap box store paints; there is a difference!! Glad you stated “design skill” because there is skill in a beautiful paint job!!! It’s not all in the paint!!
Totally agree! I painted some of the trim in our house several years ago, and started off with some semi-gloss from Lowe’s… I think it may have been American Tradition. Anyway, it was so thin, it was almost impossible to keep from having drips. I posted a question on GardenWeb, and all the painter people said Benjamin Moore was the best. So, I switched, and the difference was amazing. 🙂 I commented on your blog a few weeks ago that I was nervous to go to Spectrum because their business hours were inconvenient and it seemed like they catered more toward contractors and professionals. I think that’s probably true, BUT they were super nice and helpful, and even sent me home with the full BM fan deck so I wouldn’t have to make a bunch of trips back to pick out different paint chips.
Amazing post.What an amazing piece of work! Thanks for sharing this.
Kitchen designs
awesome! It’s true haven’t seen you put much painting up here in a while, but really sweet!
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