What is the best brand of interior wall paint?

SHORT ANSWER - Taubmans is a tiny bit cheaper. Dulux is easier to work with.  

​LONG ANSWER - Most people assume that there is a 'best' paint to use when painting your home's interior. And because they see it advertised more, people often think of Dulux.

All paints have different qualities for different situations (hardness, stretchiness, sun resistance, mould resistance, fade resistance etc.) Or put another way, Horses for Courses.

For now, I'll stick to writing about interior wall paint and leave ceiling paint and trim paint for another time!

If you want to find the best colours for your interior, click here.

Choice has recently tested 24 interior wall paint options (available for $5 from their website). They tested 4 attributes: Hiding power, Stain resistance, Scrubbing resistance and Cost. 

The top 3 place getters are Resene Zylone Sheen, Dulux Wash and Wear Plus Superhide Low Sheen and Taubmans Endure.

All 3 are premium paints with good Hiding power, Stain resistance, Scrubbing resistance. Not surprisingly they are also on the expensive end of the spectrum.

Each of the top 3 has a particular strength. Resene has the best 'scrubability'. Dulux the best 'stain resistance' and Taubmans the best compromise on all attributes. 

These 'scientific' findings are interesting to me. I've found Dulux and Taubmans to both give great finished results, but have quite different 'feel' when painting. Dulux is 'thicker' whereas Taubmans is 'runnier'. Both  still cover well.

What this means is that if you like to give a nice thick coat of wet paint as I do (spare no expense!), your Taubmans could run or sag a bit over night. 

At the end of the day both Taubmans and Dulux seem to give a very good result but I prefer Dulux because it suits my painting style and there's less chance of runs or dribbles - which no body wants.

(And if you were thinking that the other cheaper paints were either rubbish or pretty much the same, you'd be wrong on both counts. The rest of the paints they tested had lower prices and decent hiding and stain resistance BUT really fell apart on scrubbing resistance. So if you want to wipe marks off your walls without wiping the paint too, don't buy cheap paint!)

(If you want to work with one of the very few interior painting specialists in Sydney, click here.)