Benjamin Moore Aura Paints: A Review
I've seen lots and lots of designers talking about Aura and how great it is, but precious few user reviews. I know why designers love this stuff: because it's low-VOC, and until Benjamin Moore came out with a low-VOC product it was hard to get contractors to agree to use low-VOC paints. (Benjamin Moore now also offers a no-VOC paint, Natura, which lacks some of the features of Aura, most significantly its fast drying time.)
Anyway, regular readers may know I am a huge Benjamin Moore junkie, so I was already inclined to like this product. But most of the information I could find on it was people quoting the marketing materials and not really a detailed user review. So I thought I'd give you my impressions of Aura. Just to make it clear: I have no affiliation with Benjamin Moore and pay full price for all my paint, though I would happily accept free paint or coupons of anybody wants to offer them to me, because I love repainting rooms.
First, some of the claims made by Benjamin Moore (lifted verbatim from their web site):
# Extreme hide, never more than two coats in any color
# Provides a mildew resistant coating
# Color Lock Technology, no color rub-off
# Stains wash off easily
# Excellent touch up
# Self priming
# Easy application
# Long lasting fresh look appearance
# Easy clean up
I can't say anything about claims they make about resistance to fade, resistance to mildew, washability, or seamless touchups, because I have not had the paint on my walls more than 48 hours.
So of these claims, I'll talk about these four:
# Extreme hide, never more than two coats in any color
# Self priming
# Easy application
# Easy clean up
They have a video presentation on their web site for contractors (because everybody knows contractors can't read *eyeroll*), and here are some additional claims they make about the paint (not lifted verbatim):
# Thicker paint
# Excellent flow and leveling
# Virtually spatter-free
# Uniquely smooth finish
# Paint dries harder
# Virtually no odor
# Extreme hide, never more than two coats in any color
First, contrary to Benjamin Moore's claims, I found that with all three colours we used we needed a second coat. Part of this might have been the short nap on our roller, which means less paint applied in the first go. And maybe we just are sucky painters (this I would not doubt). But we inevitably ended up with lots of white primer showing through. The ceiling we did three coats on, but one of those was not Aura (I bought sample cans of the cheaper Benjamin Moore Regal).
Verdict: don't count on it.
One hour to re-coat
However, despite the less than perfect coating, drying time is also very very fast. One hour to recoat doesn't tell the whole story: within minutes of applying the paint it was drying. This meant we had to work faster, and feathering together edges could get touchy, but it also meant that by the time you had gone around the room and done one coat, you were practically ready to do the second. The other thing it means is that if you spill paint on anything and want to clean it up wet (like on woodwork), you better drop everything and do that right now because the paint is already drying. And cleaning tools is a lot harder because the paint dries on them so fast. If you're using a brush you want to keep, have a jar of water on hand to put it in so the paint doesn't dry all over it.
Verdict: true, but can be as much a minus as a plus.
# Easy clean up
And on that same subject, I submit that the fast drying time makes cleanup harder, not easier. Compared to Benjamin Moore Regal, I spent more time cleaning brushes and rollers and so forth with Aura, simply because there was more dried-on paint.
Verdict: definitely not true unless you're only comparing it to oil-based paint.
# Easy application
Similarly, selling this paint with "easy application" seems a bit misleading to me. It's as easy to apply as any water-based paint.
Verdict: easy, but not easier.
# Self priming
Now the weird one: self-priming. I have heard this claim from lots of paint manufacturers, and unless you are buying tinted primer, it's pretty much never true. In this case, I had some areas of the front parlour that were not primed because I wasn't sure I wanted to paint them (they will end up under window trim, so I wasn't sure it was worthwhile). Given this claim I decided to give it a try, and I would say that while it is technically possible to paint unprimed surfaces with Aura, I would not. The paint went on much less smoothly and I had to use a lot more on the bare drywall. Primer does the job much better at a significantly lower cost.
Verdict: not recommended.
# Thicker paint
About the qualities of this paint. First, yes it is a thicker paint, in some ways. I didn't notice a dramatic difference. The thing that was nice was that it really didn't need stirring when I brought it home; part of that is that it gets shaken for longer at the paint store. I don't know how well it stores, but even overnight I didn't feel the need to stir it the next day, and that is unusual. (We have some weird stripes on our library walls where the paint came out of the shaker at the paint store incompletely mixed, so I'm kind of particular about making sure paint is thoroughly mixed now.)
Verdict: thickness didn't make as much of a difference as a thoroughly mixed paint did.
# Excellent flow and leveling
# Uniquely smooth finish
Does this paint actually fill in small gaps and cracks? It sure seemed to for us. You do need to apply it fairly thickly (we used a 1/4" nap roller, but we should have used a thicker one; it would have gone on thicker if we had), but it does sort of smooth itself out and fill in little imperfections, something I noticed particularly when I was cutting in and doing the corners. Not anything big, but some funky places where the sander made little scrapes are invisible now, and the somewhat lumpy texture you sometimes get from the roller was not as lumpy.
Verdict: definite win.
# Virtually spatter-free
Also, I will agree that it was remarkably spatter-free. We did have some drips and drops, but did not get the usual fine spray of paint on the floor around the base of the walls.
Verdict: definitely true, and almost worth the extra cost right there.
# Paint dries harder
I don't know if it dries harder. I do know that within a couple of hours of painting I was able to tape over the paint and none of it came off on the tape. I also did not get that fun stretching and ripping action when removing tape that had been painted over.
Verdict: probably.
# Virtually no odor
As for virtually no odor, I would almost agree. There was definitely a smell of something, but it was not the excessive fumes of the primer we used, for example. While priming we had to open windows to keep from passing out. While painting we could have stuffed our heads in the can of paint and been fine.
Verdict: you will like this a lot.
Now, some other things to discuss (not Benjamin Moore marketing claims):
Richer colours
I did read somewhere that Aura offers richer colours, but as far as I could tell the sample cans of Regal and the Aura paint were the exact same colour (actually, this was pretty impressive, since I got them at different stores). I did not use any of the "Affinity" colours which were specially formulated for Aura, because they are all very grey, and I don't care for toned-down colours like that. So I would say that this is not true if you just go with your basic Benjamin Moore colours.
Verdict: maybe.
Fewer sheens available
The other thing you might want to note is that Aura is available in fewer sheens than Regal. Now, I personally think the sheen thing has gotten a bit out of control. You have high-gloss, gloss, semi-gloss, pearl, eggshell, matte, flat, ultra-flat, blah blah blah. For the most part you can hardly tell the difference between two similar sheens (like matte and flat). So the fact that Aura is only available in matte, eggshell, satin, and semi-gloss satin does not really bother me. We used matte for our walls, because it hides a multitude of sins in the plastering work.
Verdict: non-issue for me.
Not for use in HVLP spray equipment
I admit I am a bit bummed that this paint can't be used in HVLP equipment. Not that we have any, but I'd been thinking of buying some given the amount of painting we have to do. But they do have information on using it with an airless sprayer so maybe that would be the way to go. We're considering renting some spray equipment for our next big painting job, because that will be the hallway and dining room, so I may do some research and see what we'd need to get. Spraying would be so much faster and easier than rolling all that paint, and would help with all the tetchy little corners we have.
Verdict: not technically an issue for us, but a negative.
Other things that irritate me
While I'm on the subject of things I don't like, why can't you get small colour samples of all the Benjamin Moore colours? Maybe not right off the rack, but I'd be willing to wait a bit to get samples of the entire range of colours. As it is, I end up buying quarts of paint and stacking them up in the basement until I get to a room where I can use them up (like the Accordion Room and the pantry). Get on it, Benjamin Moore! (For the record, all the Aura Affinity colours are available in small sample sizes.)
So, would we use this paint again? Yes, yes, YES! Let me tell you why, and it has little to do with most of the marketing hype.
Apart from the ceiling, which required more paint than seems entirely reasonable (but also was subject to the Curse of the Pink), we did two coats of wall paint in aqua, at about 500 square feet each, and used less than a single gallon of paint. Contrast this with the library, which has a similar amount of wall space, and required two and a half gallons of Benjamin Moore Regal. The paint goes on much thinner, which means you get more mileage out of it. So with a full roller of Regal, for example, I would get about nine square feet of wall space thoroughly painted (plus feathering around the edges). With Aura, I was getting more like 20 square feeet of wall thoroughly covered. That makes a huge difference, and makes up for needing to do two coats. I half wondered whether a heavier roller would make up for that.
When you look at costs, one gallon of Aura costs about $55 after tax. Three gallons of Regal cost over $100. So even though Aura cost more per gallon, that gallon went a lot further. And we used a different colour for the library ceiling, so for that room we ended up buying three gallons of one green, and two gallons of another green in the Regal paint. When we repaint the library later this year we'll use the rest of the gallon of pink paint I bought, and we will probably have to buy another quart of aqua; I'm actually guessing we won't need to buy a whole gallon given how much of the aqua we have left. So to paint two rooms in Aura, we'll spend $150, whereas to paint one room in Regal we spent somewhere around $175 (I don't actually remember how much we spent on paint for that room, but Regal is around $35 per gallon with tax right now). That can make a huge difference if you are reusing colours from one room to the next and can get more mileage out of each can.
Ultimate verdict: this is a great paint. I will definitely use it again. I'm actually looking forward to painting some rooms really dark colours.
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posted by ayse on 03/26/09