Hi, am doing remodeling and hired out the painting (too many vaulted ceilings for me plus shutters that needed stripping). The painter is using Dunn Edwards paint that I selected at a Dunn Edwards store. DE offers 7 levels of gloss (flat, velvet, eggshell, low sheen, semi-gloss, gloss and high gloss). Most walls were speced as Velvet. The text description is "resembles flat paints when viewed head on but show a slight gloss when viewed at an angle".

My problem is that the velvet paint is almost as glossy as the semi-gloss on some of the old walls. Its almost 3 levels glossier than it should be based on the DE gloss chart I have.

I stopped the painter right away and he is going to have DE check things out. The cans he showed me do say "Velvet" on them although I did not actually see which cans were used on the problem walls.

Anyone else have this happen? And if so, what kind of test equipment was used to verify the gloss level of the paint? Obviously, I'm not going to accept just an oppinion from someone who has an financial incentive to say everything looks fine.

What would you do in my situation?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hoosier-Daddy,

How long did you give to dry and how many coats were applyed?

Hi Joe,

Its been 3-4 days now. I don't know how many coats. I'll ask.

I took an almost empty can to the nearest DE store this afternoon. They didn't have any kind of test equipment but they did put some of the paint on a smooth strip of material apparently for this purpose. Where the paint was thin, it looked close to the gloss chart they use but where it was thicker it was more glossy. I don't know if that's because it wasn't dry yet or what. Is that why you asked about number of coats?

Eventually I was passed to a floating rep who happened to be there and happens to work with my painter. That's when it got weird and somewhat contradictory.

He said that our dark colors will be more glossy than the light colors they use in their gloss chart. He also said that the new low VOC formulations mean paints look glossier than they realy are for the first 3 or more weeks. I asked why I didn't read that in their brochures or on their samples and he didn't know.

He went on to say that the only thing they sell less glossy than velvet is flat and proceeded to tell me that flat would be a bad option for a dark color because flat dark colors look chalky and anything rubbed against them will leave a lighter spot. It was kind of funny when he demonstrated that on a panel painted with a dark flat paint. He drug his thumb accross it and it left a lighter looking trail. But I did the same on the velvet pained panel right next to it and got the same result. Was hard not to laugh.

Anyway, the rep and painter are coming to the house to look at it tomorrow. But since they aren't bringing any test equipment and the rep already strikes me as trying to avoid any repainting no matter what I doubt much will get resolved at that time.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hoosier-Daddy,

Hoosier-Daddy:

Take a hair dryer and keep an area of that paint warm for 20 minutes or so and see if that lowers the gloss of the paint.

If it does, then I can explain what happened.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nestor,

quote:

Originally posted by Nestor:
Hoosier-Daddy:

Take a hair dryer and keep an area of that paint warm for 20 minutes or so and see if that lowers the gloss of the paint.

If it does, then I can explain what happened.

Hi Nestor,

Thanks for your response. I notice that you deleted some of it, deciding to wait to see what happens with the hair dryer first. The deleted info was very informative and useful in understanding what is happening.

I have not done the hair dryer test but I have since found out that some sample paint we put on a wall over 3 weeks ago was, in fact their velvet finish. We were just trying out colors at the time and did not know what gloss level the sample paint was. We had asked for a specific gloss for some of the paint but were told sample paints were not mixed to customer specified gloss.

Anyway, when we used the sample pant in a bath room, the gloss level was the same as the existing semi-gloss white currently on that wall. We assumed that the gloss was semi-gloss, but as I said, we were deciding on colors then, not gloss.

That test paint has been there for 3 weeks and it still has the same gloss as the original white semi-gloss next to it. So it didn't lose any appreciable amount of gloss in that time. We didn't apply the test paint any thicker than needed to not see the white thru it. I'm thinking the 3 weeks normal drying time will be equivalent to a short time under a hair dryer.

To answer a question from your original post, yes the colors in question are VERY dark. The DE names are Wild West and Amazing Amethyst. One is brown and the other purple (like a dark eggplant) and they are so dark it is hard to tell them apart without reasonably bright light.

The DE rep, my painter and general contractor all inspected the velvet paint that had been used on two accent walls. The painter didn't offer any opinion, and I don't know if people all have the same degree of gloss perception so that was fine. The contractor agreed that the same spec paint tested on a semi-gloss wall weeks before was as close in gloss to the existing white semi-gloss paint on that wall. The rep didn't disagree but instead doubted I could tell/prove the paint was too glossy without scientific tests which they weren’t prepared to do and would cost me a lot of money to have done myself. He also noted that the text that accompanied DE gloss charts mentioned that the gloss range for velvet was from 5-9. Their high-gloss finish was near 100. The implication being that even if their sample gloss chart was visually inaccurate, the 5-9 range listed could just mean their sample was a 5 but my paint was a 9 and technically within spec.

I don't buy the latter because, as I said, their Velvet sample was as glossy as pre-existing semi-gloss and DE says their semi-gloss is in the 40-50 range and three full steps above Velvet in their ranges.

Anyway, they all went off to conference and I was informed they would repaint the two dark accent walls in flat and replace all the yet to be used velvet paint with flat paint since that is the only paint they sell that is less glossy than velvet. In addition, the areas that were spec’ed to be dark semi-gloss paint will be done in Velvet since that has similar gloss to semi-gloss in a light color.

The contractor later confided that DE picked up the tab for most of it.

I could be wrong about their motivation, but suspect they realize their darker colors are actually glossier than the gloss chart (that uses a light color) would indicate, which if I understood your pre-edited post, is entirely possible.

I'm going to go up the ladder in DE to recommend they at least put a disclaimer on their gloss chart to say that different colors may have different gloss levels than the samples on that chart. Personally, I think they should allow customers to buy samples of a specified gloss level or at the very least make it clear what gloss level the samples are. I wonder if they don't let customers specify a gloss level for sample paint because some people would buy a $5 sample when they needed a small amount for some touch-up paint. If so, let customers pay extra to get test paint with specific gloss because this was no fun.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hoosier-Daddy,

So: If there isn't a manufacturer's defect in the paint, then it should become less glossy with time.
If it doesn't, then either the paint has been ruined by adding too much colourant to it, or you just have to wait longer for the glycerine added when tinting the paint to it's desired colour to fully evaporate:

Here's my original post:

Take a hair dryer and warm an area on your wall that you can judge the gloss of by the way light from a lamp or window reflects off the paint there. See if heating the paint for a good 20 minutes to half an hour lowers the gloss level of the paint. If it does, and I expect it will, then the problem is that the glycerine added when tinting the paint still hasn't evaporated from it, and it's what's causing your paint to appear abnormally glossy. Given time, your paint will lose it's gloss as the glycerine in it evaporates.

The rest of this post explains what I think is happening, but it all hinges on the colour of your paint.

You see, hardly anyone makes coloured tint bases anymore, and so if you wanted them to make a purple paint in a velvet gloss for you, they'd start with a "deep" or "accent" velvet tint base (one with no white pigment in the can to begin with) and add LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of both red and blue paint tinting colourant to the can in the paint tinting machine.

And, what you need to know is that paint tinting colourants consist of coloured solid particles (called "coloured pigments") suspended in glycerine. That's important because glycerine is very much slower to evaporate than water. (So much so that there's a common DIY misconception that paint tinting colourant by itself is like motor oil in that it will NEVER dry, which is false. It just takes a while longer for the glycerine to evaporate from it, leaving the coloured pigment behind as an extremely fine coloured powder.)

Depending on how much colourant was added to your paint when tinting it to the desired colour, there still may be LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of glycerine inside your paint film, and that can be causing the additional gloss you're seeing. And, the above is especially true if it's cold outdoors and the walls that were painted are exterior walls cuz of their cooler surface temperature.

Was it a heavily tinted paint? If so, take a hair dryer to an area where a ceiling light or the light from a window reflects off of, and see if warming the paint to drive off the glycerine lowers the gloss. (The glycerine added when tinting the paint plays no part in the way the paint forms a film, and so warming the paint to drive off the glycerine prematurely won't harm your paint in any way.)

That paint sales rep might have been thinking of the glycerine added when tinting the paint when he told you it could affect the gloss for up to 3 weeks after painting. It shouldn't come as a surprise to you that oil based paints will "shrink" in film thickness as the paint thinner in the wet paint film evaporates from the paint. Latex paints do exactly the same thing as the water and coalescing solvent evaporates from them. I fully expect the glycerine added when tinting the paint also causes the paint film to remain partially swollen until ir evaporates from the paint film as well. If it does, as the glycerine evaporates and the plastic continues to shrink, the extender pigments in the paint film will stick progressively further and further out of the plastic, causing the paint surface to become rougher and rougher, and therefore flatter in gloss.

You don't need to know the rest...

I think the paint sales rep you're talking to is telling you a bunch of BS. Latex paints have two different kinds of pigments in them. There are coloured pigments that determine the colour the paint dries to. But there are also clear, transluscant or white solid particles that can be almost large enough to see with the naked eye, called EXTENDER PIGMENTS and these are what determine what gloss level the paint dries to.

For him to say that darker colour paints dry glossier than lighter coloured paints means that he doesn't understand that colour and gloss are two separate characteristics determined by two different kinds of pigments in the paint. The coloured pigments don't affect the gloss level the paint dries to because the coloured pigments in the paint tinting machine are all far too small to cause the paint to dry to a rough surface needed for lower gloss paints. Otherwise, they couldn't make high gloss black paints in hardware stores or home centers, could they?

Were it not for extender pigments, all paints would dry to a high gloss, but to different colours. Were it not for the coloured pigments, all paints would dry clear, transluscant or white, but to different gloss levels.

If he's the sales rep for a paint company, then he should know about the coloured and extender pigments in paint. So, I kinda agree that he's just trying to shift the "blame" onto you because he figures he's got more to lose by pi$$ing off the painting contractor than he has by pi$$ing you off.

Also, this business about the low VOC's causing the paint to be artificially glossy for the first three weeks after painting seems bogus to me as well. You see, wet latex paint is a "slurry" (meaning it consists of solid particles suspended in a liquid.)
The solid particles are the coloured and extender pigments as well as tiny hard blobs of clear or transluscent plastic (called "binder resins"). MOST of the volume of the solid particles in wet latex paint are those extremely tiny binder resins.
The liquid consists of a slow to evaporate water soluble solvent called a "coalescing solvent" or "coalescing agent" dissolved in water. (If the paint was tinted, the liquid will also contain some glycerine.)
When you apply the paint to the wall, the first thing that happens is that the water evaporates, leaving all those tiny blobs of clear plastic surrounded by the coalescing solvent in an ever increasing concentration. That coalescing solvent penetrates into the plastic blobs, making them soft and sticky. The same forces of capillary pressure and surface tension that causes water droplets in clouds to coalesce to form rain drops then works on those soft sticky blobs of plastic causing them to pull on one another and "coalesce" into a solid film of sticky plastic with the coloured and extender pigments suspended inside that film very much like raisins inside raisin bread. Then, over the course of the next few days, the coalescing solvent evaporates from the paint film, filling the air in the room with that "freshly painted smell". And, as the coalescing solvent evaporates from the paint film, the plastic hardens back up again to the same hardness it was before, when it consisted of gazillions of microscopically tiny blobs suspended in the watery slurry.

Now, the "VOC" in latex paint is the coalescing solvent. It's what causes the "freshly painted smell" in the room as it evaporates from a latex paint.

If he's saying that the VOC's in their low-VOC paint are affecting the paint film's gloss for up to 3 weeks, then there still has to be coalescing solvent in the paint film for up to three weeks in order for it to have any affect on the gloss. In that case, the VOC's are evaporating extremely slowly from the paint, and you should have a paint film that's soft and sticky to the touch for a long time after painting and that gradually dries up over the course of three weeks. Not one that you can rub your thumb against only a few days after painting without getting wet sticky paint all over your thumb. Also, if the coalescing solvent evaporates from the paint film over the course of three weeks, you should be able to smell a very mild "freshly painted smell" in your house for a full three weeks after painting instead of the usual more intense freshly painted smell for only a few days after painting. If the paint film doesn't behave that way, then you know that what you were told isn't correct.

Maybe print off this post and let both that paint sales rep and your painting contractor read it.

PS:
The reason that paint tinting colourants will use glycerine as the carrier fluid is because glycerine is highly soluble in both water and mineral spirits. So, the same paint tinting colourants can be used to tint both latex and oil based paints, and that means a hardware store can tint all the paint it sells on the same paint tinting machine.


If artificially aging that paint a few years by heating it with a hair dryer doesn't correct the gloss level, then there's something wrong with the paint to begin with.

The above is what I originally posted.

I cut it back because the monkey-tard I mentioned previously was claiming I was typing long posts just to brag about how much I knew.

Just between you and me, I don't brag cuz I don't NEED to brag.

If the hair dryer doesn't work to provide the low level of gloss you were wanting, then there was something else wrong with the paint to begin with. Maybe they tinted the wrong tint base?

Anyhow, now you have the original post, which you can do with as you please.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nestor,

quote:

Originally posted by Nestor:
.....

The above is what I originally posted.

I cut it back because the monkey-tard I mentioned previously was claiming I was typing long posts just to brag about how much I knew.

Reminds me of the joke... Man: "Doctor, it hurts everytime I do this." Doctor: "My advise is to stop doing that."

If someone doesn't like to read long posts, my advise is that they stop reading them.

quote:

Just between you and me, I don't brag cuz I don't NEED to brag.

No, I think you are just bragging. Reminds me of my days at Harvard. I dropped out after just 2 days because the $%#&% professors kept showing off that they knew more than I did. So I found a school with really dumb professors and my self esteem was never better.

Now excuse me while I try to find a decent support forum where people only post what I already know.

But seriously, thanks a LOT.

quote:

If the hair dryer doesn't work to provide the low level of gloss you were wanting, then there was something else wrong with the paint to begin with. Maybe they tinted the wrong tint base?

Turns out they repainted the two dark accent walls in flat yesterday afternoon so I can't try the hair dryer. But since the same paint color had been used on a test spot 3 weeks ealier (without my knowlege that the paint was Velvet) and was still almost as glossy as old semi-gloss next to it maybe that says as much as the hair dryer test.

quote:

Anyhow, now you have the original post, which you can do with as you please.

I managed to save a copy of your original post before someone talked you into dumbing it down. But I'm glad you reposted it anyway because I'll bet it will be informative to others that may search the subject in the future.

Regarding the bases this company uses, the way it was explained to me is that they have 7 white bases, one for each gloss level they sell. So for example, all velvet paint starts with the same velvet base. Then they just add color to that base. Maybe higher gloss for darker colors is a side effect of using tht method.