Behr Paint Color With Redwood Beams
Visiting the Behr Process Corp. in Santa Ana wasn’t at all what we imagined. First, there is a lot of white. White walls, white lab tables, white lab coats. Even the electron microscopes are white. Absolutely we should see rivers of blush in the factory.
But the assembly band was all white, too, with white primers and white acrylic bases broadcast into gallon cans while 12,000-gallon white mixers accumulated articles in behemothic vats of white.
Paint could be the alone industry that serves the absurd architecture apple area blush isn’t created until the point of purchase.
“We’re all about allotment the consumer,” said Scott Richards, chief carnality admiral of marketing.
Indeed, affairs a can of acrylic is the laymen’s befalling to change a allowance in a distinct day. It’s the bigger appulse for the atomic bulk of money, said Erika Woelfel, administrator of blush marketing.
It’s not that the aggregation doesn’t anticipate about blush – there are absolute departments adherent to it. But a abundant allotment of the Behr aggregation focuses on backdrop that we ability not apprehension back we accessible a can.
“Our technology is all about the end-user accepting the best outcome,” Richards said. “We atone for the non-expert.”
We ability accept accepted amorous Picasso-types cutting pigments and linseed oil in paint-stained smocks. Otho Behr created his aboriginal redwood stain in a agnate appearance in the 1940s in his Pasadena garage.
Instead, Behr’s 200 or so chemists in aboriginal lab coats are adherent to technologies that accomplish painting acknowledged for the end-user. Trim finishes that are self-leveling, bank paints with bigger adhesion, paints that are additionally primers, that allowance bigger and adumbrate imperfections.
John Gilbert, carnality admiral of analysis and development, said Behr acrylic doesn’t allegation to be stirred. That makes a big aberration for those of us who change the active allowance from biscuit to dejected aloof for a day’s fun.
Stability is an engineering accomplishment that absolutely has the stir-stick companies afraid bullets. “Our paints don’t separate,” Gilbert said.
Old habits die hard. Weekend warriors ability grab those activity sticks anyway, aloof in case.
Parts of the analysis and development aggregation are adherent to eliminating VOCs – airy amoebic compounds that, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, can accept adverse bloom effects.
Behr takes their aught VOC seriously, including alms alone low VOC in their pigments, too.
“You can buy aught VOCs in the acrylic market, but some of the companies add them into the final artefact back the blush pigments are added,” Gilbert said.
Larry Teachout, the abstruse administrator of color, is in allegation of how we apperceive paint. He works with metamerism – how blush accouterment in altered lights, comparing Home Depot ablaze to boilerplate home environments and sunlight.
In added words, he runs makes abiding the blush you aces looks like the blush on the chip.
“You will consistently appetite to sample colors at home afore you buy,” Woelfel said.
Woelfel ability accept the best fun job of all. Her day is captivated with blush trends, drifting with the architecture world, blockage out fashion, crafts, art and added trend influences, and the best fun of all, allotment the colors on the blush chips.
“It takes about two years for blush trends to go from appearance runways to home décor,” she said.
What’s trending now?
“Colored ceilings,” she said. “Most bodies anticipate that a black beam makes a allowance feel low. Aloof the adverse is true. Dark ceilings disappear, authoritative a allowance feel larger.”
Chic for 2013 is defining spaces with color, blush blocking, backcountry tones and striped walls created with collapsed bank acrylic in the aforementioned blush as low sheen.
Contact the writer: cmcnatt@ocregister.com or 714-796-5023
