On Sep 4, 10:54*pm, nestork wrote:
;2922280 Wrote:

I spent a fortune on Home depot topof the line Latex. I primed the bare
wood with primer and the it basically too 3 or 4 coats to cover. The
color is white.
I don't know what's wrong with Latex paint these days. I remember when
Latex fist came out in the early 1960's. My father bought Dupont Lucite
Latex and he never had a coverage problem. The crap they have today is
like water.

There are quite a number of factors that affect the hide of a latex
paint, and I'll explain each of them:

(First off, tho, DuPont makes some vinyl acrylic resins, but so far as I
know, DuPont never marketed a latex paint under their own name. *The
very first latex paints to be marketed in North America was Glidden's
"Dulux" paint that was introduced in 1959. *Glidden is a subsidiary of
ICI Ltd. *(Imperial Chemical Industries) of Britain.)

The gloss level of the paint is one factor in determining how well it
hides an underlying colour. *All other factors being equal, the glossier
a paint is, the easier it is to clean with simple wiping, but the less
well it will hide an underlying colour.

The reason for that is quite simple. *Paints contain "extender pigments"
which are huge rocks almost large enough to see with the naked eye.
Were it not for extender pigments, all paints would dry to a high gloss.
These extender pigments are either white, clear or transluscent, but
don't have any other colour to them so as not to affect the colour of
the paint. *And so, the reason why flatter paints hide better is exactly
the same reason why water is clear, but a cloud is opaque. *The extender
pigments added to lower the gloss level of the paint reflect and refract
incident light, thereby scattering the light and making the paint more
opaque (or more difficult to see through).

A second factor is the amount of titanium dioxide in the paint. *When
lead carbonate was banned as the high hiding white pigment in
architectural paints in the mid-1970's, it was replaced with titanium
dioxide. *Unfortunately, titanium dioxide is one of the more expensive
pigments used in paints, and so the more titanium dioxide you put in a
gallon of paint to obtain better hide, the more you have to charge for
that gallon to make a profit.

Aside: (Exterior paints will most often use zinc oxide as the white
pigment because:
a) titanium dioxide acts as a catalyst by which paints chaulk when
exposed to intense sunlight, and so an exterior paint with lotsa
titanium dioxide will chaulk more than a paint with little to no
titanium dioxide, and
b) zinc, like copper, arsenic and boron, is a natural biocide, so the
zinc oxide in exterior paints helps to prevent mold and fungi growing on
the paint in continuously shaded and damp areas.)

A third factor is the colour of your paint. *Basically, wood stains get
their colour from dyes, whereas paints get their colour from solid
coloured particles called "pigments". *(You will never find dye in a
paint.) *There are two kinds of pigments; organic and inorganic.

ORGANIC pigments are best thought of as the "colourwheel" colours. *They
consist of different kinds of yellows, reds, blues and greens, and all
the colours you can make by mixing those primary colours, like orange,
purple, magenta, etc. *Organic pigments tend to have low opacity (they
look like little pieces of coloured glass under a microscope) but they
disperse well, and that high dispersion helps increase the opacity of
the paint.

INORGANIC pigments are best thought of as coloured rocks. *They're the
synthetic equivalent of the coloured rocks that artists like DaVince and
Michaelangelo have ground into fine powders to make their paints from
for centuries. *The inorganic pigments in a paint tinting machine will
be:
Black - which is actually soot made by burning natural gas in special
ovens with insufficient air so that copious amounts of soot are formed.
White - which nowadays is titanium dioxide, the most expensive pigment
commonly used in house paints. *There are two different kinds of
titanium dioxide; rutile and anatase, but quality paints and primers
will use the rutile form because it's refractive index is higher,
providing for better hide.
Yellow Oxide - which is a mustard yellow iron oxide that is the
synthetic equivalent of the rocks found in the Italian town of Sienna,
from which the natural pigment "Sienna" gets it's name.
Red Oxide - which is reddish brown in colour and is the most common form
of iron oxide.
Brown Oxide - which is chocolate brown in colour, and
Raw Umber - which is a very dark brown that could almost be mistaken for
black.

ALL of the these inorganic pigments provide great hide, but they have a
propensity to clump together, and that clumping together of these
inorganic pigments acts to diminish the hide of the paint. *In general
tho, paints with lots of inorganic pigments tend to hide better than
paints with lots of organic pigments in them. *Since inorganic pigments
are the synthetic equivalent of natural rocks, paints tinted with
inorganic pigments fade very much less due to exposure to the Sun than
paints tinted with organic pigments.

Home Depot is not the place to buy quality paints. *Even if you buy a
gallon of Rolf Lauren for $55 a gallon, they'll still tint it with the
same colourants they use to tint their $18 per gallon Behr Eggshell
"Enamel". * I think that if you had purchased any paint company's
top-of-the-line paint, you would have paid more, but you would have
gotten a lot more titanium dioxide white pigment in your paint for
better hide.

Next time try Benjamin Moore Aura or any of their "Regal" line of paints
which include Aqua Velvet and Aqua Pearl. *I use Pratt & Lambert
Accolade paints in my building, and I've never been disappointed enough
in it to go shopping for a better paint. *I've heard good things about
Sherwin Williams SuperPaint and their Duration exterior paints. *While
it's true that you get what you pay for when it comes to buying paint,
it's also true that you don't always need everything you get. *When I
repaint one of my apartments, I'm repainting it the same colour as it
was before, and so why do I need a high hiding paint?

A flatter paint that called mostly for inorganic pigments in it's tint
formula would have hidden better than the one you bought. *Finally,
tinting your primer with a light absorbing pigment like black or Raw
Umber will help a lot in hiding the underlying colour.

--
nestork

Wow - Everything I ever wanted to know about paints and more.

I thought the Behr line of paints had high ratings from Consumer
Reports.