What’s the Best Exterior House Paint?

March 20th, 2019 | Chandler Zieg | Uncategorized | 17 Comments

What’s the Best Exterior House Paint? – We Asked 12,000 Painting Contractors.

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Does anyone really know what the best exterior paint is? Few of us can accurately experiment with different brands and see how they stand up over 10 or 15 years.

Painting contractors would know. They do exactly this. Many paint their whole lives trying different products throughout their career, quietly observing which brand lasts over time.

We asked 12,000 painting contractors; ‘What’s the best exterior house paint (based on duration and value)? We also provided 3 categories to rank the brands:

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Exterior house paint can vary in price quite a bit, so to figure out truly the best value based on the price, we separated the votes into these categories:

Low-grade: $15-$30 retail

Mid-grade: $30-$50 retail

High-grade: $50-$100 retail

Here’s what we found:

Low-grade Winners ($15-$30 per gallon)

Sherwin Williams: A-100

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Glidden: Essentials

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Valspar: Premium

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Important Note: Most contractors we polled made it very clear that you shouldn’t use a low-grade paint on the exterior of your home. Almost all of them recommended using a mid-grade paint (or higher) on the exterior.

Consider that your home is one of your largest investments (if not THE largest investment). It’s worth spending a little more on the paint to get a paint job that lasts especially since the paint cost is usually only 10-20% the total cost of painting your house.

Mid-grade Winners ($30-$50 per gallon)

Sherwin Williams: Super Paint

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Benjamin Moore: Ultra Spec

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Sherwin Williams: Resilience

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Sherwin Williams Super Paint was the dominant winner here as you can see. Depending on the contractors discount, it can usually be purchased for $25-$40 per gallon.

High-grade Winners ($50-$100 per gallon)

Sherwin Williams: Duration

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Sherwin Williams: Emerald

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Benjamin Moore: Aura

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Summary

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Sherwin Williams was pretty dominant in this study, which would make sense; they are one of the largest paint manufacturers with sales at $11.8 billion annually, but if painting contractors nationwide recommend them, we would to!

Benjamin Moore also had a pretty loyal following. It did not receive as many votes but the votes it did receive were raving.

We’ve actually used most of these products ourselves (we’ve been painting houses for 14 years now) and we don’t have any complaints about Sherwin Williams products. It goes on easy, covers well and holds up over time.

Keep in mind, the preparation process is always important when painting your house. Even great paint will peel if the surface is not prepped right.

So there it is; The Best Exterior House Paint according to actual painting contractors. Hopefully this information will help guide you on which exterior paint you use in the future. Thanks for reading!


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