Who cares about paint? Talking about paint may rate right up there with watching the grass grow. But it is important, especially in terms of long term home improvement costs. The two most important factors in getting a good "value" with paint is prep work and the quality of the material itself. With that in mind, I would like to offer this article as a way for you to make better, more informed decisions about your paint and what you are actually buying.

Verified testing from the Master Painters Institute (MPI, www.paintinfo.com) has proven 4 out of 5 paints recommended by Consumer Reports for high traffic areas completely failed professional testing. Buying paint based on "value" or some "warranty" number slapped on the side of the can for marketing is always a bad idea. This is just not a biased opinion from a painter who wants to sell you more expensive paint so he can get a bigger mark-up. Higher quality products really do make a difference, even with paint.

MPI approved products for high traffic areas are only marginally more expensive and can give results up to 9.14 times better. Cheap or value based quality is an oxymoron. Forget Wal-Mart, Kmart and any other "mart" and go to a real paint store, like Dale's Paint in Colorado Springs, where you can talk to sales professionals who deal with contractors daily. You can find out why a certain paint is used more than others, how it goes on and how it holds up to real use.

These 5 paints got kudos from Consumer Reports for "high scores for staining and scrubbing, and resisted gloss changes."

• "Behr $24 CR Best Buy"
• "Kilz $19 CR Best Buy"
• "Valspar $27"
• "True Value $23 CR Best Buy"
• "Dutch Boy $15 CR Best Buy"

Here are the cruel hard facts from the MPI article's summary. " Only 1 of the 5 passed qualification tests for performance contained in the test standards and protocol for MPI #138. Some failed cleansability or burnish resistance, or scrubbability, etc.

"For reference, MPI's minimum number of scrub cycles for this standard is 3000, but 1 of the 5 Consumer Reports "Best for high-traffic areas" products actually failed by film breakthrough observed as early as 319 cycles.

"That only 1 of the top 5 of Consumers Reports "Best for high-traffic areas" paints passed the MPI performance standards does not indicate that the products tested are not good paint products, but it does indicate that the performance and durability standards needed for commercial projects are somewhat more stringent. Until accepted performance test methods are adopted by any consumer product testing, perhaps professional specifiers of commercial products should avoid DIY paint recommendations for commercial and institutional projects."

The moral of the story is that professional painters know what works. We want to give you products that actually work because, for the many small one or three man businesses, our job is on the line every day. We care about our quality and hope to make your life a little better by doing our job well.

For the complete article by MPI, please go to www.paintinfo.com.

by Tim Hoeffel
Better Painting
719-641-5043
http://betterpainting.wordpress.com
tim.hoeffel@gmail.com