Paint Worth the Price? Valspar, Duron, Behr, and Ralph Lauren Review
I recently “made-over” our home office, painting the walls and refinishing the furniture. I used four different brands of paint on various components of the room in order to evaluate which paint brand was worth using in the future.
Valspar
$17.98/gallon (primer), $28.98/gallon (signature, eggshell)
As you may have seen in an earlier posting, I used Valspar One Coat Primer to refinish the furniture. I have used other Valspar products and found similar results.
Pros: Great customer service, even coverage, average cost.
Cons: Requires multiple coats of paint to provide full coverage and therefore is more work.
Conclusions: For a small job, you will need only one can of paint and therefore it may be the most cost efficient. But it’s not worth the time and effort, in my opinion.
Duron
$40.35/gallon
I used Duron One Coat White (OCW) for the furniture, doors, and trim. For other rooms, I have used Duron Plastic Kote, eggshell finish. I found similar results across the different types of Duron paint.
Pros: Great color choices, even and full coverage for lighter colors, OCW only requires one coat when using a paint brush, Plastic Kote is easy to clean.
Cons: Cost, Plastic coat requires multiple coats of paint to provide full coverage for darker colors, OCW requires multiple coats when using a roller (for example, on doors and furniture), plastic coat tears away from wall easily when removing painter’s tape.
Conclusions: OCW is worth the money. Otherwise, Duron is too much money for not so great results.
Behr
$23.98/gallon
I used Behr Premium Plus paint on the walls above the chair rail. I have used Behr, eggshell finish in other rooms, as well.
Pros: Great color choices, even and full coverage for lighter colors, low cost
Cons: Requires multiple coats of paint to provide full coverage for darker colors, still needed 2 coats for the light color
Conclusions: Behr is well worth the money. I would buy Behr paint for smaller jobs that will only require one gallon of paint, even with two coats.
Ralph Lauren
$27.98/gallon
I used Ralph Lauren (RL) paint, eggshell finish on the walls below the chair rail.
Pros: Great color choices, even and full coverage for ALL colors using only one coat, requires less paint in one coat therefore avoiding annoying paint drips
Cons: Cost
Conclusions: RL paint is well worth the money and time it will save you. I will happily spend the few extra bucks on RL considering the time and work it saves!
Overall Conclusions
So was the cost worth it? Valspar or Duron are not worth the cost, even though Valspar is comparatively inexpensive. Duron One Coat White is a good option, since one gallon goes a long way, but overall is rather expensive. Behr is a good cost-effective option, but like most paints requires 2 coats (you might be able to get by with just one). Ralph Lauren was worth the cost - it was by far superior, and in the end will save you money because you use less paint, and save time and effort.
What do you think? Do you agree with the pros and cons? What’s your experience been? What brand would you recommend?
April 14th, 2008 at 10:11 am
I know I’ve mentioned a good experience before with the Valspar paints, but I do have a couple of things to add…We used the Valspar primer over deep, deep red walls. While it wasn’t what I would call “full” coverage– you could still see a little red– it was absolutely enough to knock down the red. We were able to paint a fairly light color (Using Valspar Signature with an Eddie Bauer color) and probably could have gotten away with one coat, had we been a bit more thorough the first go round (using better lighting, and checking more carefully after our ten year old’s work, which was still great!). No red in sight! We went with the Signature paint over their standard or the Olympic (?) on the recommendation of the salesman, a guy I was friends with in high school and who has been working in paint for 8 or 10 years now. I trusted him not to pull a fast one.
They also run a lot of specials with $5 rebates per can. I received my 4 rebates in one check very promptly. I’ve been really happy with the experience overall. Now, Sherwin Williams, on the other hand: thin and overpriced. But they were one of the few places where I could get a low VOC oil-based trim paint.
Guess they’ve all got pros and cons…
April 14th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Hi Amalie,
Thanks for sharing your experience with Valspar. Its interesting how some brands of paint really work for some people and not others. We hired a painter recently who swears by Duron paint, and as you saw, I don’t think its all that great (especially for the price).
Also, you brought up a great point that I forgot to include in the initial post - Duron is now owned by Sherwin Williams. I have used their paint before and after the buy-out and didn’t like either. Anyone have a different experience?
April 14th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Absolutely– my mother helped her sister-in-law paint a door with Valspar and it left drips all over the door…not a great experience! I guess it’s project to project and person to person.
As for the SW paint, we used the “Classic99,” their low-end line, and it was really streaky and thin and cost quite a bit more than the Valspar. I had assumed that the Duron would be better, but it sounds like it has its own problems!
April 14th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
We’ve got plaster walls and I’ve painted all the rooms with one coat using Behr and a very fluffy roller. And since it worked beautifully I’ve never tried anything else (I have the tendency to try the cheapest first…).
April 14th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Hi Maya,
Welcome to One Project Closer!
I felt the same about Behr - it worked great so never tried anything else, until my recent experiment. Let me know if you end up trying a new brand. I’ll be interested to see if you found similar results.
April 14th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
I used to think Behr was great….until I tried something else….then I soon realized that Behr really is just an average paint. I will always use Sherwin Williams now. Their paint is by far the best coating paint I’ve used. The price is right in line with all the other as well!
April 14th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
No matter what paint I use, I’m stingy with what goes on the brush and roller, so I end up having to put on many coats. But I feel better about not having “wasted” paint and being thorough.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:19 am
My experience with Behr paint hasn’t been as positive as your review. I find it tears off the walls when removing tape if a piece of furniture is placed against the wall– even months after the paint has dried.
I’ve never tried Ralph Lauren and may give that a shot next time, though I’m leaning more toward Sherwin-Williams or Benjamin Moore.
As a suggestion, it would be great to have pictures along with your review to see the differences in one coat coverage between the brands. Maybe next time?
April 15th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Hey Josh,
Thanks for your feedback. I will post pix next time - just didn’t get my act together fast enough. I believe the home office will be featured as a before/after in the near future, so check back.
That’s interesting that Behr came off the walls, even after months. I will keep an eye out for that.
Please let me know if you try out Ralph Lauren and what your results were. I plan on trying Benjamin Moore for my next project. Is there any specific type of BM paint you recommend?
THANKS!
April 15th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
We’ve had good luck with Behr… did our RED kitchen in almost one coat using no primer over Ultra Bright White… we did the second coat more because we had heard we were supposed to.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I used Behr in my kitchen and when I had spatters and scrubbed them, I found the paint came off, but not the grease. It was so terrible, I had to repaint my kitchen. I used Ralph Lauren paint, which went on really well and is very scrubbable. I would never use Behr again on anything.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Hi Leslie,
I have never tried scrubbing my Behr walls, but we have scrubbed Duron walls and found similar experiences. The color came off!!! I’m going to be repainting some of my Duron walls in a few weeks.
-Jocie
June 21st, 2008 at 2:43 pm
hey everybody
i have got a question for somebody to answer what would be the best paint to use on a house i am starting to build and i have some up grades and we are going to paint the house some different colors and i know one of the colors is a deep red and most of the others are like a deep brown and some gray this is the first time to really get into this and i need some help finding the right paint for my house im just coming back from iraq and my wife is at home doing the picking and choosing and i really dont want the builder to give her a scam by getting the most expensive kind to not look very well and flake at the end thanks for all the inputs
June 21st, 2008 at 5:18 pm
As a first-time homebuyer, I used Behr from ceiling to baseboards in every room in the house, and I loved it. I had to cover a room with Notre Dame navy and gold everywhere–even the windowsill, ceiling, and door–and the Behr covered it all right up. I also painted my dining room a deep red wine color, and with the tinted primer, it took no time. How many coats depends on the color and how stingy you are in application. Definitely use good lighting. In addition, H.D. allowed us to return unused gallons of paint with a full refund! They also gave me a 10% discount when I purchased all the paint at once. We just bought a new home this month, and we are considering Olympic b/c it is low-fume, etc, but I’m nervous to stray away from Behr…it has served us very well from top to bottom!!
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:43 am
sam - you’ll find that everyone has a different opinion on paint, so the “right” one can be hard to find. We’ve done numerous paint tests here and have found Ralph Lauren to far outperform any of their competitors for paint. Jocie recently did a comparison of primers and found Behr’s primer to be the best at covering over red paint. That said, it seems like almost everyone has something they really like, or really *don’t* like.