Benjamin Moore Paint, is it the real deal?

We had our soffit and facia painted with Benjamin Moore about 15 years ago and it still looks great! I was just commenting to myself last week how well it has held up. (Located in SE Louisiana)

It covers well. I painted some built-ins I made, BM Advance. It’s held up very nicely. That stuff flowed and settled smooth and easy. Used one of those small white mini rolling brushes.

“yeah, they changed the formula."
Every paint company changes formulas at some point, because products change (voc regs, raw materials, tweaks). Colorant systems may also change for the above reasons. The challenge is to keep things consistent. Doesn’t mean a company sucks.

You can have some of the exact same paint on hand, still good in the can and I can just about guarantee it will look different on the wall once the paint has been on the wall for about a year.

Paint fades over time and that is why you should try to take a sample of the paint on a surface you're looking to repaint to the paint store so they can try to computer match it for you.

Last time I had painting done the contractor told me that paint quality was more of an issue with oil-base paints due to supply chain issues. No single brand was consistently better, but SW & BM were always among the best.

As far as color matching goes, industrial spectrophotometers have become extremely sophisticated. A well-equipped paint store can be very good or spot on at color matching if somebody has the right training... not always the case. I think auto body shops have the best equipment.

Benjamin Moore is a good paint. No doubt about it.

All of our painters prefer Sherwin Williams though.

But 100% you need to go Super Paint over A-100. SW low end A-100 is not that great of a paint. Super Paint is a great paint at a good price point for interior and exterior.

Yes our contractor pricing is insane. I think Super Paint is around $75 a gallon in store and our contractor pricing is around $30-35.

I like Benjamin Moore paints, but use SW Super nowadays, I am constantly trying to match paints and usually can peel up a piece and take in to the shop and SW matches very well.....BM wasnt as accurate. At some point one of our paint stores went with Defoe? I didnt like it at all. I hopefully will only be painting a couple times more in life. I am not bad at ti, it just takes me forever.

Painters "preferring" SW is most definitely about contractor pricing. And if you're in love with a BM color, by all means use the actual BM paint. The difference will be subtle, but it will bother you if it's a color you're familiar with. I have been bitten twice by painters doing this to me.

And to add, of all of the painting projects we've personally done over the years, I can say that BM paint is almost foolproof with how nicely it goes on. We tried to save money, but I don't even like the way other ones smell. I realize that's weird lol.

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Painters "preferring" SW is most definitely about contractor pricing.

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Yeah, I operated a small painting business for years and where I live Benjamin Moore paint is much more convenient to get and at a slightly better discount than SW so almost all painters here say BM is better.

The different paints the two brands offer are very comparable. Any good painter will do fine with either.

The only real step up from BM or SW will be brands like Farrow&Ball and that step up is mainly immediate appearance -- which is considerable if you want to spend more since they put a lot more pigment in their paints -- but not durability.

If I were paying for a paint job, I wouldn't go cheaper than BM or SW though.

If you're particular at all definitely get sample pots or quarts and put up samples. The better the paint, the more pigment and the more pigment the more difference you see depending on the light and geometry of the rooms.