When I moved into our home 3 years ago I needed to paint some trim in my son's room dark blue. It was late and walmart was open and I used some cheap Dutch Boy stuff. I just remember it took 4 coats of this blue semi gloss stuff to cover the white trim around 2 windows...and I always thought a 5th coat would look better.

Fasforward a few years and I am putting up preprimed (white) molding in the basement and we want it to be navy blue. Does dark blue over a light color usually take more than 2 coats? I was thinking of 1) buying a better brand navy blue paint (in satin) and 2) using my left over paint as initial coat to darken up the molding first with the hopes of wasting less of the better paint and hopefully only needing to apply 2 coats of the better paint...why waste the old paint and perhaps the new paint will cover in less coats over a darker color...thoughts....