How to Save on Paint

Here's a comment left on my post titled People are Discovering Frugality:

This weekend, my wife and I went to Lowes to get some paint for a project we were doing in our basement. As we were waiting for our paint to be mixed, I saw several gallons of paint at the end of the counter that had "mistint" written on the lids. Some of them had $5 on the can, some had $1 on the can. I asked my wife if there was anything else that needed painting in the house. She told me that she wanted to paint the extra bedroom again and the color on two gallons of the mistinted paint looked like a nice color, so we grabbed them. I figured the paint was about $20 a gallon or so.

We got to the checkout and it turns out that the paint was one of their highest priced paints at $30 per gallon. We just got $60 of paint for $2. Because we were "kinda" looking at painting another room anyway, that was a real bargain.

If you want to save on paint and can be a little flexible with the color of the paint, checkout the mistints at your local Lowes. It could save you a bundle.

Good point. And who can really tell the difference between "natural green" and "forest green" anyway?

Comments

[fivecentnickel.com]

I bet my wife could tell the difference between natural and frost green. ;)

[Stephanie Rainwater]

Actually, I'm the WIFE mentioned above - and we'd heard that they do this at Home Depot, too. My husband really does a great job looking for those opportunities. He ALSO saved us a bit on admission to a local attraction this past weekend - and reminded me that we need to take advantage of any of those memberships that you have. Whether it's group discounts available from your employer, coupons you see from the paper or in restaurants, or discounts available from your community - take advantage of them!

[DCS]

It's not just big box stores. Specialty paint stores (Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore,etc.) usually have an ample supply of mistakes or returns from pro painters whose customer changed their mind once it hit the wall. You might have to ask, or you might find them on the floor somewhere.

Need more than one gallon? Most paint stores mark the formula on the top of the can. Have them make up a matching gallon at full price. It's possible the cheap can was a reject because it was mixed wrong, but the full-price can should be close, and you just mix them together before you start painting (which you should do with any paint anyway).

Some places can even run the sample on the outside of the cheap can through a spectrophotometer and match it perfectly even if the formula on the can is wrong.

[Ed]

We have always had problems picking the right color of paint, but one day we picked a 3 gallons of what we call the "opps" color from home depot, and it ran us under $5. To this day, it was hands down the best paint color we have put on our walls. People actually comment on it when they come in the house.

[mbhunter]

You can save a lot of money on paint by buying it used. LOL