Most of my house is painted with EK paints. The colors are gorgeous... 1/2 Mustard Seed in downstairs guestroom/bath; Cognac in LR/Den/Upstairs Public Rooms; Rust in DR; Honeysuckle in Kit; most of my ceilings are Dusk. No matter how lovely the colors are, I could never "see" the full spectrum magic that everyone talks about. I desperately wanted to, but can't really see it. I mean, the colors do have a tremendous depth to them. I thought maybe that was it, but that's not such a big deal. Then, my bf and her husband were visiting, and he saw it! He was just staring in disbelief at the walls, asking how I found paint that had so many colors in it. Then he went off on a long description about the colors of light at different times of day, and that he plants all white flowering plants, so he can enjoy the gorgeous color shift of light. He thought I was getting it, but I just said "oh yeah... I've heard of people like you. So, you can really see the colors?" Yes, he can see them. Nice, but it still doesn't make it worth the big price tag when you factor in the lousy quality of the ICI paint. It's garbage, if you ask me. Now, that I realize it's Glidden, no wonder... that's junk too. When I painted the Rust in the Dining Room, it was so bad with streaking and burnishing, yes, even after tinted primer and 3 coats, that I called them to complain. The folks at EK graciously gave me a free gallon of the next sheen up to paint over the Velvet, Eggshell, I think. That did the trick! Honeysuckle in Kit is the eggshell. No problems at all. The rest of my LR and Den is Cognac/Velvet. It is a disaster! I am disgusted with how ugly it looks. Cannot clean it, even with a very soft cloth with clear water. Cannot be touched up at all. I am going to contact them, since I am going to have to repaint the entire area. Will take 3 to 4 gallons, of one coat. I doubt they will do anything about it, but otherwise, they may have lost me. We are just 2 adults, 2 cats, and one little boy. We are not tough on walls. What a lovely, expensive mess!

Ok, let me expand on tr65 said First let me preface it with the fact that I own and operate a store that sells BM Aura and has a web presence, I know many of my customers on line have found us through this web site. So while my post here will certainly favor BM Aura, I will try to give a unbiased explanation of everything. First of all, The Affinity Colors are special in 2 small ways. 1 They are designed(or selected) to harmonize with one another. You can pick any 3 colors and they blend together, its kind of like a "color selection for dummies system". Secondly, none of them require the use of the Aura Foundation Coat. The Foundation coat is a specialty product for use primarily with certain reds and yellows mainly from the Color Preview Collection. If you choose a color that requires it, use it! Otherwise you will not get two coat coverage. The foundation coat acts as a first coat, with the actual Aura providing the second coat, giving you the two coat coverage(You shouldn't need a coat of the foundation coat then 2 coats of finish paint). Secondly, Aura can be mixed in ANY Benjamin Moore color, and almost any competitive color. One thing you will hear, that was even mentioned in another post is that some colors do not match well. Depending on how you look at things this can be seen as true. Aura gives you a greater depth of color. It is not a full spectrum paint like EK, but it does behave more like one that traditionally mixed paints. This is why some colors do not seem to match particularly well. When you move into the world of full spectrum paints, and paints that behave more like them(such as aura) you have an issue with color metamorism, colors changing in different lighting conditions. Since I ship Aura, I always check the mixes against a color swatch just to be sure. I have had one particular instance where a color did not seem to match particularly well(and I am pretty anal about this). I wasnt going to ship the gallon. I then took it under another light source, and it was a dead on match to the chip. So did it match or not? In one light I thought it was an "ok" match, it could have been a little better, but then under another light source it was perfect. I think this is why major paint companies have stayed out of the full spectrum ring, it is very difficult to depict these lively colors on a color chip which gets produced by a printing process. Next...the colorants. If you get a gallon of Aura (or any other of Benjamin Moores new Waterborne Products, such as WB Eco-Spec, WB Ceiling Paint, or the forthcoming Natura) it will be mixed with the Aura Colorants(these are reffered to as the Genex Colorants). It doesn't matter if the color is an Affinity Color, another BM color, or a competitive color. Aura gets the "aura" colorants, not the universal(glycol) based ones. Also on this note, there was another post about people getting the Aura Colorants put into Regal Paint. I do not recommend this for a few reasons. First of all, there are no formulas to mix Regal Paints with 'Aura' colorants, so you would have to guess. While the colorants do tint in similar ways to each other, they do not tint exactly the same, so replacing the universal colorants with the aura ones is bound to cause some matching problems. Also, the universal colorant system is a 12 colorant system, aura is 13(though one of the yellows is only for the exterior line), not to mention there is no brown colorant in the aura system, where there is one in the universal system. Also note that Aura is really a 2 part deal. Both the paint and the colorants are special. If you use the Aura colorants in the Regal Paint, you don't get the benefits of what BM Calls Color Lock(that's part of Aura, not the colorants). In my opinion, Aura has a lot of good marketing points(better leveling, better coverage, very low VOC, etc) but the ColorLock is the most important and impressive. The color just does not rub off! Now, as for Afinity colors in Regal Paint. BM provides formulas for some of the Afinity colors to be mixed in Regal but not all. My experience in doing this has not been good. I tried to mix Wenge in Regal. First I scanned the chip with our color computer and mixed the formula it gave me. It came out AWEFUL; not even close. I then called BM and had them scan it for me and mixed that formula(paint companies have better equipment than you will find in any retail store for computerized color matching). It was equally bad. I also tried to mix Dinner Party in Moorglo exterior. I had the same results. After about 10 attempts to try to get that can right (including having to scoop some paint out of the can to make room for more tint), I got it close. Retailers who do not have Aura will tell you its ok, out of both lack of experience, and not wanting to miss a sale. If you do decide to try this, please.....try a quart first!!!! Personally I wont do it without explaining to the customer the results I am expecting, and saying outright, that if i do it, the can of paint is theirs, I am not promising accuracy. And frankly, it has nothing to do with preferring they buy Aura, or making a few extra dollars on a sale. We are a family owned business operating under one family for 55 years, "upselling" someone on a gallon or two of paint isn't a good long term idea for customer relations. As for a 125 year old house...One thing that I will recommend is BM's new Waterborne ceiling paint. It is in the 25-30 dollar per gallon range. I recommend it because it is a DEAD FLAT, and because of this, it hides surface imperfections like nothing else. I just used it myself and was very impressed, and its cheaper than Regal Flat (and it uses the Aura colorants, so its a Low VOC paint that stays Low VOC, even when tinted). Hope I didn't put you to sleep and gave you some good information for making your decision.

It depends a LOT on the color of EK paint. I would call her and ask. It shows up in some of my EK paints, not in others.

jockewing I had posted these photos of my office on the other thread (about Gustavian Grey) where you had also appealed for photos of Lichen. The ceiling is EK's Pumice. The sky was dark and stormy at the time so the color appears less green as IRL. The color is actually a soft greyish green. Definitely green rather than grey IMO.