When I was sorting through all the swag I collected at the Buffalo Home + Garden Show, a coupon for Sherwin-Williams dropped to the floor. Because S-W products have generally been priced higher than the comparable brands at Home Depot + Lowe’s, I’ve pretty much taken to overlooking them when it came to buying mass amounts of wall paint.
But blatant sales incentives generally change that for me. (Sidenote: Anyone else looking forward to TLC’s new series on Extreme Couponing?) This particular coupon had a $10 off $50 purchase, and, more excitingly, a buy-one-get-one-free offer for the Color To Go product. Initially assuming this meant that they were like the little (itsy-bitsy-tiny) samples sold at the big box stores (commonly 8 oz. for $3), I was surprised to see that the product at S-W was 29.5 oz. (That equates to 1.84 pints, .92 pint, or .23 gallon) priced just over $5. Do a little coupon finagling and home show swagging, and you’ll get 2 for that price.
Was this good to be true? Maybe. The employee at the store explained to me that the samples lacked the same bonding agents that traditional paint contains, meaning that it wouldn’t hold up to wear and tear and S-W strongly discouraged users from treating it like a real coat of paint. Regardless of that warning, I wanted to try it to test it out, so I picked some color chips.
Two colors I’ve been thinking of introducing more of are tomato-soup red and yellow-orange. See the check marks on the lowermost left and the uppermost right? Meet Laughing Orange and Energetic Orange, the winners of my little trial. The second box down on the right is Cayenne, which was a close third choice.
I’ve been wanting to insert a little more of these colors since:
1. I bought (matching) stools at a garage sale last summer (for $1, no lie). They haven’t been repainted yet, but I loved the color they already were – sort of like tomato soup:
2. I bought some new art for my mantle (which conveniently has both laughing orange + energetic orange tones in it):
And so, with those inspirations I made my choices and purchased (again, the lower left and upper right in that paint chip photo further up on the page). Seriously. All this paint, just $5.
And… zoom in a little bit on the specs so you can see for yourself the exact kind I bought – interior/exterior acrylic, 29.5 oz., satin.
I’m not planning on painting anything that receives heavy wear-and-tear (like dresser drawers or a shelf), but I’m going to start with some old picture frames and see how it holds up. More to come. Let’s see if I can disprove the paint advisor at S-W and make good use of this cheap paint.
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I know for acrylic paints there are mediums you can get and mix with them to make them harder/better/faster/stronger… maybe there are similar mediums for latex wall paints to make them more durable?
Rad. I’m going to have to look into this some more.
Oh how I love coupons! Can’t wait to see the results!
Also, now I want tomato soup for dinner. Glad we have some in the pantry!
I heart SW paint! I agree it’s a bit more expensive than the traditional options at HD and Lowes, but if you join their preferred customer program (free), you get coupons via email pretty regularly (last one I rec’d was for 30% off all paints and stains). Their “Classic 99” paint seems to be the least expensive and so far we’ve been extremely happy with the results. Interesting tidbit regarding the samples being less durable. I wasn’t aware of that. I think they will hold up find for what you’re planning to do with them. Have fun!
Em, where did you buy the Buffalo-themed art? I love your new prints and I need some stuff for the new house!
Art is from Hero Design (www.heroandsound.com). They had a shop on Allen until last month — they rid themselves of the storefront started running it out of their home. I LOVE their work, and I think they have an exciting free print in TODAY’S Buffalo News… so go find one!
Um, actually I *did* use ColorToGo samples sizes for painting rooms successfully. I had accumulated 11 (sadly, yes) of these last summer & fall with the same sale coupons to figure out undertones & choices for a central hallway & multiple bedrooms scheme. When I finally got around to finishing the last of the bedrooms this spring, I had experience on how much paint I really needed for the walls & closet of each room, and was a bit flexible in color, so I got bold and mixed up my own combinations from these for the last two rooms. I was really pleased with the color results, and I have enough leftover labeled for touchups on both in the future. My advice would be that as long as you stick to the same base paint, you could probably get real creative and combine as many as needed. If you understand a bit of color theory you can adequately mix up pretty much what you’re after. Don’t know what the SW reps were really saying about the lack of bonding agent, because my results look and went on just the same as the other rooms I did with SW Superpaint I had bought mixed in the store.
That’s so great to know! I haven’t had any trouble with either of my samples either. The paint still feels strong, and has held up really well in all applications. Glad to hear someone’s put it to the serious test and succeeded. Thanks for sharing!