One store, two very different paints

Stain master

In our staining test, the Behr low-luster paint (right) came cleaner than the Freshair Choice.

Substantial performance differences exist between high- and low-scoring paints. Consider the standout Behr Premium Plus Enamel and the less impressive Freshaire Choice low-luster paints, both sold at Home Depot stores.

The top-rated Behr earned a very good or excellent score in every category (except for fading, making it a poor choice for sunny rooms). It's a stalwart in our staining test (shown below), in which a specialized machine runs a sponge over a greasy concoction applied to a painted panel. The sponge makes 25 consecutive wipes of the mess with a common household-surface cleaner, then our technicians gauge how visible the stain is. If you have kids and pets at home, the Behr paint's resistance to staining will prove valuable.

Freshaire Choice, with an overall score that is 25 points below that of the Behr, was only good at stain resistance and was even worse at hiding. For hiding, you would need at least two coats of Freshaire Choice to match the hiding power of a single coat of the Behr. It's also $13 more expensive per gallon than the Behr. (We do not factor price into the Ratings, which are available to subscribers.)

The higher price of Freshaire Choice could be a factor of its VOC content(a claimed 0), because lower-VOC paints tend to cost more than their higher-VOC counterparts. If your buying decisions are influenced by green considerations, remember that you might need to apply two coats of a paint that does only a fair or poor job of hiding, or you might even have to repaint a space sooner if stains don't come out.