I'd try Benjamin Moore for the last coat. Either Aura or Regal will give you better color and coverage than SW.

I don't trust anybody at picking my paint. I need to be there and see it for myself. I'd give it a few minutes to dry and see what you have. It would help if you bring a sample board with your current paint on it so you see what the last coat over that will look like.

You are not crazy. Please step away from the edge! :-)

I have about two minutes right now...could go on and on and on about what you are experiencing. In a nutshell, SW are corporate stores, BM are mostly privately owned. Some SW stores go through staff like teenagers through Wendy's. The BM guys have been there for years and will be there for years to come. That's where the good matching comes from...years of experience and lots of patience.

Painters are not always persnickety about color the way some of us are. In fact, they usually aren't, IME. It's up to the clients/consumers to advocate for ourselves by making sure the color is what we want, the sheen is correct, the quality of the paint is the best we feel we can afford, the cut-ins are good, the cleanup is proper, etc.

I am not blaming you. I am just welcoming you to the learning curve! :-) Unfortunately, I have never had great "luck" with painters brought in by GCs. That's how I originally got really good at painting myself back in 2005. Best GC in town brought me two sets of sub-par painters, I picked up a brush and never looked back.

So, my only advice is, you have to babysit them and make sure you get what you want every step of the way. Sad but true. At least you found colors you like! Now, go get 'em!

My ex is a painting contractor. They are not picky when it comes to the colors. . .they see sooo many and ones they often wouldn't personally choose.

That being said, it sounds like a paint problem and not necessarily a painter problem. Paint half of that board with the new paint and take it back to SW. They should refund for all that paint if it isn't matched and poor quality.

Just a little side story. . .my ex almost was fired over bad paint once. He was doing a white mantle and a red wall. He called me all upset because it looked so bad. He specializes in high end mill work, but the mantle looked awful. . .all orange peely. Well, he got a call from the paint store that that paint was recalled. Once he got the right paint it looked 110% better. . .like it was suppose to.

Good luck. . .and deal with SW. It sounds like you got bad paint and a clerk who didn't feel like really trying to match your colors.

Hambirg makes some really good points! Take a look at the post Sheesharee started about her bad batch of SW paint on her stairs.

Thanks, all. And I don't mind painting, but I do not have time to do it before the house has to be done and we move in.

So I will go on down the path of getting the color recipe correct, and I will insist this time she/he calibrates the computer with their chips before matching my samples.

And then, I will cross my fingers when they go buy the paint and paint the walls. As long as it is close in color, I am just going to take a deep breath and move in. If six months after I move in, I don't like it, I'll go to a BM store, buy some good paint, and repaint everything!

Thanks, all, for letting me know that painting contractors don't usually care if they match the paint color or not! But you would think that would be a fundamental job description, wouldn't you?

I will insist this time she/he calibrates the computer with their chips before matching my samples.

It is the tinting machine that gets calibrated, not the computer. Calibrating the tinting machine has nothing to do with chips or the computer. I am not exactly sure what you're saying, but I'd like to help you communicate clearly with the paint store personnel.

The key to getting a good match is first scanning the sample and then often tweaking it by eye. Paint stores do keep "recipes" for other brands of paints and their colors in their computers, but the information is not always reliable.

I get my paint guys to look at what the computer suggests and also scan the chip I bring them. (You should bring in the Behr chip when you go.) We may talk about the discrepancies between the two formulas suggested since sometimes what the computer says and what the color reading device says are different, and make a decision about how to do the tinting.

Then, after the paint is mixed, they dab it and dry it down. That's when the tweaking by eye starts. They are pretty good about knowing how to tune up the color but sometimes I have to put in my own two cents to help get it right.

Patience is important, as is experience. I have watched my Ben Moore paint guys take 15-20 minutes matching a color for me.

Don't just pick the colors, BUY THE PAINT! The exact paint you want (I prefer proclassic from SW to their Duration). I've had terrible experiences from BM so I stick to SW myself, but I think you'll find a 50/50 mix of people who feel the same about either place. In reality their paint lines are very very similar from line to line (low end to high). Make them do the final coat in the proclassic (or whatever) or two if necessary to ensure good coverage.

Oh my!!!

I WISH you would've come to my Paint Dept.!!!

To correct a couple things....
1) Stores calibrate their Scanner(s), not the tinters. Although computerized tinters usually have to be calibrated yearly.
2) Competitive-brand fandeck software can cost a bundle, and some stores may not want to buy this kinda stuff. All these REALLY are...are just lab-scans of different fandecks, and converted to formulas for a certain stores'/brands colorant-databases.
3) I do two things....I'll look at the "Stored formula" in our competitive library, and compare it to a couple of scans. Then I "back off" of a couple colorants, and shoot the color. This way, I can always add more to tweak a color.

>>> There's no way to know if a stores' "Scan-Library" (Competitive Fandecks) will match a chip until the paints actually made.
>>> Ask me how I know this....;-)

From now on people:
* Specify in your painters' contracts that you DO NOT want a color matched into "their favorite" brand...UNLESS you're OK with it. Possibly something like "No color matching".
* Or, like I deal with every day...."I want -color x- matched into C2 paint". No problem there! It's usually quite a step up from the color-chip/brand they have!
* Inquire with painters if they have favorite brands, and find out specifics. If you have a firm preference, see if your painter is OK with it too. Many will apply what you like. Others are pretty set in their ways!!

Sorry for being "Mr. Wordy" there!

Faron

Thank all of you for your advice and encouragement. I was really beginning to think I was just being particular and a perfectionist, but I realize now that my GC's definition of a good painting sub may not be the same as my definition.

If all the other customers picked standard Sherwin-Williams paint colors because they thought they had to, then they probably got the color they selected since no color-matching had to happen. That, and maybe they waited until it was all done to come and look at the house, I bet (I am there every day and almost all weekend!)

Thank you all again - you're the best!

Faron, thank you for the clarification. Even a "paint geek" like me still has lots to learn. :-)

I have heard often of tinting machines being calibrated, nothing about the scanners themselves. I assume it is like recalibrating a computer monitor from time to time? Is there a place to read up on these scanners. I was looking for some clarification late last night and couldn't find any. Can you tell me who makes them and what they are called?

Ever humbled,

Amy