Hi, I’ve been off of Breaktime for a while now, 6 years I think, but now I need some help. I’m a carpenter in Albany, NY and I’m taking the aluminum siding off of my house. The 2nd floor and front porch has red cedar shingles with a solid stain like a chocolate brown. I went to Benjamin Moore and matched the color with a solid stain oil base paint. Within a year the paint has faded pretty bad. I went back to the paint store and the guy said it is the same paint that was used in 1920 on my house and that it needed a second coat. Some of the shingles that are painted in the picture are original and some are replacement. So the guy doesn’t understand the product he sells and I need advice from somebody that does.
What is missing in the new paint that I used? Lead, benzine, anthrax? I’ll find it and put it in. I just need to know what the difference in the paints are. I wouldn’t paint the original shingles at all if I didn’t have to do so much repair work because of the alum. siders. The old paint looks great.
Thank you,
Scott
Replies
Maybe your original sample started off darker and has already faded a bunch.
Stain fade
At least with paints, oil based products then to fade much faster than latexes. We have gotten used to the potentially long life of latexes and expect oil based products to give us a 20 year life too.
That said, the fading appears to be moving to color towards the blue family. This tells me that the yellow and/or red pigments are fading. I am not familiar the the Benjamin Moore tinting system, however, most paint tinting systems use two yellows and two reds. There is an oxide and an organic pigment in both colors. The organic pigments are bright colors, yellow like you imagine a ripe banana and red pretty close to that of a fire engine. These are needed to produce bright, bold colors. I believe that they have improved their stability (fade resistance in sunlight) and most manufactures now market these pigments as interior/exterior. In the past, these colors were designated as interior only. I do not believe the the organic pigments are nearly as fade resistant as the oxides but no paint company wants to say that they cannot make many of the colors that their competitor can so they use the organic pigments in exterior paints even though they may fade.
The oxide colorants are very muddy colors and thus cannot produce bright, bold colors. Yellow oxide along the lines of mix of yellow and brown mustard. Red oxide is the red part of rust. While they are not exciting colors, they are more stable.
A paint color can be made from an almost infinite number of combinations of pigments. Thus, while I suspect that the stain you bought was formulated with the organic colorants, the color could also be achieved with the oxide colors. If they used a computer color matcher, it may well only give one formula using the organic colors. I do not know why they don't try to use the oxide colors if possible. Not only are they more fade resistant, they cost the paint store less. Check the tint formula on the can. Yellow oxide may be described as OY, YOX or C or oxide yellow. Red oxide may be RX, OXR, F or oxide red. I think Benjamin Moore uses OYand RX. Names like fast yellow, premanent red and magenta are probably organic pigments which I would avoid for exterior use unless I absolutely needed them to create the color I wanted. I believe the Benjamin Moore designations are YW, RD, and MA.
I have used a Behr paint on some trim that went on as hunter green and a couple years later is hunter blue. I can't read the label thanks to thermal printers but I suspect that it was mixed with an organic yellow. Fortunately I am not tremendously bothered by the color change and I got the paint for free as someone else's leftovers so I can't really complain.
The bottom line is, I would have the paint remixed using the oxide colors blue, black and white which should all be reasonably fade resistant. The color match may need to be done manually as the computer may only give a formula using the organic colors.
fading stain
Thank you Kurt, that was very helpful. I'm sorry that I didn't reply earlier, forgot my password, security question, etc.
Scott