It depends on which type of paint grade he uses in a particular brand. I like to use BM Aura. I now live in CA and DE is a local company, so many of the painters are more used to it and it used to be more easily available than BM. Even in the 5 years we have been here, BM has expanded quite a bit. Old habits are hard to break! The exterior of our stucco house is painted in DE, as that is a proven elastomeric paint designed for stucco and the climate here. No issues with that paint at all.

Your painter probably has an account with DE and gets better pricing. I am remodeling some bathrooms and told my painter exactly what I wanted, written down in detail (BM Aura Bath & Spa in matte). He purchased it and will hand those receipts to my GC and I'll be charged extra for the premium paint, which I am happy to pay extra for a product I have used before and been happy with.

The exterior of my house was last painted in 2000! They told us to select colors from DE but the leftover paint cans said Kelly Moore. :) All I know is, the paint has held up so well, both in color and no cracking/peeling, that I can only hope to have the next paint job turn out so well.

You'll be fine. D-E is every bit as good, (if not better) than BM. I've been custom building in So Cal for over 35 years, and D-E has been my go to even on my own house. BM may have national recognition, but all must comply with CA's strict requirements...

As I mentioned a few months ago, my house is painted a D-E color mixed by Kelly Moore. It's time to repaint and I'm having a hard time finding a gray I like as well as what I have. When I checked online, the color has been discontinued by D-E. So yesterday I stopped into the D-E store a few miles from where I live. Yes, the color has been discontinued, but they still have the formula and can mix it up for me.

But I was struck by how different the store was from the BM, KM and SW stores in my area. No racks of color chips or glossy pamphlets of latest trends. Just a cavernous store and warehouse with gallons of paint, brushes, rollers, trays, etc. It didn't seem a place a homeowner would shop. I wonder who they're appealing to and why would a homeowner select their colors in the first place?

Well this is an older thread, but I'd have been very upset with that swap! We chose BM Color stories line because it has NO dulling grays in it. It's pure color. It makes the walls on which it's applied livelier. DE uses grays to darken it's colors. Not the same at all. BM does have lines where they use grays to darken, but their Color stories line has living grays. We had to drive two hours to get our BM paint and it was well worth it.

I have always used BM here in upstate New York. Last year we bought a house in Florida and there are many SW stores and a few others that I had never heard of. The same thing--cavernous warehouse type places with a counter and a guy who would get me the paint from the cans that were all over the floor behind him. I did buy the paint from a local store and then SW using a BM chart I had. The SW just doesn't look as good as BM. I bought their most expensive. It wasn't the $55+ I pay for BM. I will be repainting most of the rooms with BM this fall. I dread the drive to the lone BM store in the Florida traffic but it will be worth it.

Had I specified BM for a job I was paying for I would be very unhappy if it was not used.

They did a swap with me too.. We were first time homeowners and didn't really know anything about paint manufacturer preferences. Our painters told us to pick out our colors at Dunn-Edwards and that's the last we thought about it. However, we noticed that all the cans were Kelly Moore using the D-E formula. Why they specified one mfr's color and used another's actual paint, I have no idea. However, that was 16 years ago and the Kelly Moore paint has held up remarkably. Very little fading (gray doesn't show fading that much) or flaking. So, in my case, it turned out for the best. I still like the D-E color *and* the KM paint.

BM is mostly used on the East coast. Dunn-Edwards is a Southwest paint and very popular. It is a high-quality brand formulated for hot weather with their LEED certified factory located in Arizona and headquarters in Los Angeles, CA. Various quality level lines, with even the "lower" quality still being equal to many other brands mid quality. Dunn-Edwards also does not advertise- strictly word of mouth. So you might not have heard of them if you're not directly in either the painting/building world or a designer/architect.

They do great color matches of other brand colors as long as you provide a sample. They also do not use the universal colorant system so they are able to provide better color matching and custom colors with more tints available. Hope this helps others who stumble upon this thread!

this just happened to us, too. it's a bummer. i'm going to paint the rest of the walls w/ benjamin moore though, so it'll be interesting to see just how much of a difference there is b/c it was a painstaking process to choose colors