Exterior Paint Brand Testing

Sharper Impressions Painting knows the importance of testing and reviewing the paints we recommend and apply for our customers. We stay on top of our paint vendors and their materials to provide cutting-edge paints for our customers so that their paint jobs look great and last a long time.

To quench our scientific thirst every few years or so, we conduct in-house paint material research. This year we painted untreated and unprimedrough cut cedar wood boards. We used five (5) top brands of base white exterior eggshell/satin paint. This is the most popular sheen selected by our customers.

We applied all the paints with a 2 inch Wooster brand paint brush and checked the thickness while wet with a thickness gauge to make sure the paint was evenly applied and the millage (thickness) was the same for all brands.

We chose the most popular brands used by painters and do-it yourselfers alike. The final paint brand list was whittled down to: Valspar Ultra, Behr Ultra, Ben Moore Aura, PPG Paints/Porter/Pittsburgh Paints Manor Hall and Sherwin Williams Super Paint. (please note, the multiple brands listed for single testing was due to some paint companies merging)

We labeled each painted board accordingly by paint brand and waited for a sunny day to haul it up to our office roof. This exposed all the painted wood to extreme weather conditions including sun and rain. These two divisions of mothers nature wrath has proven to be the harshest on exterior paint coating products.

Tim, our no fear-of-heights Manager, was tasked the important project of installing this board on the roof of our office at a perfect 45 degree angle. This angle has been proven to accelerate the weathering conditions and speed the durability results, instead of putting it at a perfect vertical setting. (like most home surfaces)

Tim had some funny comments regarding one of our office Managers who doesn’t make it onto ladders very often. “It was a brisk, beautiful, slightly windy, but sunny day. As I climbed to the top of the roof, which seemed like forever, I could feel the ladder bend with every step I took. I had some sense of security though, because I knew Jeff, who spent more time in the office and less on ladders, watched silently in awe from the ground and imparted me with these words of wisdom. “Be careful!”

Tim secured the board that contains all 5 brands of paint, at an angle, to our roof and it will remain in place for a full calendar year. For the next few years, we will venture to the roof again to retrieve the board and see how each brand of paint lasted through all the seasons.

We will post more photos along with an update on how each brand weathered.Just some of the things we will test for include: yellowing, fading, mildew resistance & peeling. Stay tuned!

This testing helps us gauge what paint brands hold up to sun, rain and wind more than others and what paints can be trusted on your home or office.