i used a red behr premium plus flat paint (color-boston brick) in our living room that needed only 2 coats over unprimed builder's white.

With FPE, you'll only need ONE coat. IF you're a good painter!!

I've matched French Roast into C2 LOVO Premium.
I can't remember the formula, but I'd use a Gray primer. It's obviously a dark color!

People's technique/tools and skills vary too much to just blindly say two coats with no primer is fine!! It's foolhardy to say "Go for it" without a little warning!

Reds however...can be a B*tch, depending on the formula.
Use a battleship gray primer.
I couldn't in good faith advise a customer NOT too!

Again...unless you're usin' FPE.

Faron

I thought I read that before you paint red
prime with grey.
But I could be wrong.

OOPS~

Ditto what Faron said :)

I thought I read it somewhere before.

I painted my kitchen BM Aura Caliente. It went over builder's white with no primer. Covered quite well in one coat, and perfectly in two coats.

All of the BenM Aura Affinity reds cover in two coats - no primer required. PPG's Accent Color reds also cover in just a couple coats. I've used "Blaze" a few times, for example.

I read on a blog yesterday something about six or seven coats of paint -- this was an interior decorator/designer who is in obvious need of better paint pro support than what she currently has.

If you have to apply six or seven coats of paint in the year 2011 there is something SERIOUSLY wrong. SERIOUSLY.

Not to say that there aren't still colors out there that *could* require that many coats given the right circumstances. But at this point in time, many of those colors do not exist any more as they've been phased out with reformulations. Also, most counter staff know enough to not let you buy those colors if by chance a few still remain in their pallette; often they've removed them from their racks altogether.

Not guaranteed, however. It's still a matter of buyer beware and you as the consumer of color must ask questions to be sure you are not buying a color that requires six or seven coats.

Again, you do not have to accept those terms to get the color you want. You just need to make smarter paint and color choices.

The colors that do require multiple coats (meaning two or three) go out the door with, like Faron said, battleship gray primer or the recommended tinted primer - depends.

When it comes to using/choosing dark color paints, the worst thing in the world you can do is go cheap. You will have to purchase more gallons of cheap paint compared to fewer gallons of quality paint of a higher grade that will cover better and spread farther.

And you will pay the price for not going to a professional paint store where they provide advice, service, knowledge to go with their products.

Prime with dark gray. On a white wall we did one coat of dark gray (almost charcoal) per the advice from the paint guy. After that, we only needed one coat of red. We used Duron paint.

BM Regal Select has fantastic coverage, too. I'd bet it would handle most reds in 2 coats.

Thank you so much, everyone! Funcolors, I agree. My rule is one coat with touchups/a light second coat. I always buy a good paint to help achieve this goal.

I want to try Aura, but I read you can't go back over what you just painted. My painting style tends to have overlap, so I'm concerned it wouldn't work for me. Our BM store is an Ace Hardware and I don't feel confident about the support there. I get better support at our Dunn Edwards, and I like their paint. I tend to avoid Sherwin Williams because I've used it in the past and wasn't impressed.

The last time I had to do multiple coats was a dark navy Behr paint debacle. Never again!

I just finished my first coat of red paint using Aura. It's WONDERFUL paint. It says you don't need to prime but I used some "white" Zinsser 123 primer I had on hand. The paint completely covered in one coat but I'm going to use two. I was concerned about all the negative reviews but I seriously can't understand why so many people are having problems. I'm not the fasted DIY painter and it was fine. It was well worth the money.

Are you planning on painting the ceiling red, too?

huge bm aura fan here...raspberry truffle is yummy and very easy coverage.

We used SW Red Bay in our powder room. It's a darker red and we used 2 coats over "builder beige" (watered-down paint). We didn't even need to use primer..it turned out great and we love the color.

Years ago our daughter wanted a red room and we used BM Cherry Red. It was a lovely color if you want red. Obviously, paints were different then, (it was probably BM Regal) so YMMV, but it covered just fine in two coats. But covering the red when we wanted to change colors later (when she graduated from college and moved on) was not so easy!

So, ya know there are different kinds of reds when it comes to red paint. They all are not created equal.

If it's an inorganic pigment red then it will cover, hide really well and primer or no, you have a shot at a two-coat project.

If the red is mixed using organic pigment, you know right off the bat that primer is not an option -it's a must- and you are *in* for multiple coats.

Also, the base your red is mixed in is very telltale. Many are 'poured short' meaning there's a lot of room in the can for oodles and gobs of red colorant. Colorant adds a transparent factor, it doesn't help at all with hiding.

The base for your red can also be clear as opposed to a nice bright, opaque white which further compounds that hiding and multiple coats issue. Some yellow paint colors have the identical hiding challenges as red. Many brands have special yellow and red bases to help counter all of these factors.

One red may cover/hide super easy and the red on the strip right next to it won't.

I want to try Aura, but I read you can't go back over what you just painted. My painting style tends to have overlap, so I'm concerned it wouldn't work for me.

You can go back over what you just painted - but not heavily, or the paint will lift. BM Aura is a unique paint and does take a bit of getting used to at first, but I can just about promise you that once you use it, you'll never want to use anything else. The wonderful thing about it is that it dries incredibly fast - I mean, an entire wall perfectly dry and ready for the next coat within an hour. Just don't get too determined to force complete coverage with your first coat, and you'll see that once you're applying the second, you are getting full coverage. It's amazing stuff!

We used BM Aura in Caliente on our kitchen island, over a base coat of Wenge (a dark brown) and it covered very well. It is holding up very well, too, with a lot of kids in the house.

I used the sample jar on a kids table over white primer and some bare wood, and it took two coats.

Aura is great just used it for the 1st time a couple of months ago. Did not have the paint lifting experience, don't know why more people don't use it.

HD has a paint (I think Behr) that is paint and primer in one, and I think it will work in one coat, it covers better than Aura IMHO, we painted pale warm gold over medium green in one coat.

Thank you so much for the wonderful responses! I wrote down all the color suggestions and went over them with my daughter. She decided to go with French Roast, which is a dark chocolate brown. I'm saving the reds for future reference, though. I do love a good deep red.

Funcolors--I really appreciate the information on reds. I finally found the name of the red (Brick, ACE paint) I used before and I even wrote down the formula (E, T, and KX, but the letters make no sense to me, lol). The base used was red. Is there a way one could tell if the pigment is organic or inorganic? Would the mixing person know?

Auntjen--thanks for the tips on Aura. It sounds like it would work for me after all. I AM going to try it soon, just not this time around. The Ace Hardware paint employee expressed concern about being able to match a Sherwin Williams color in Aura. I think this is why I don't use it--the colors it comes in haven't been my preference and they always hedge when asked to match, even in their own regular paint colors. They charge $64 a gallon for it, too. That seems high, especially considering I can get Citron locally (I'm in Tucson) for less.

Now I'm thinking red for my daughter's bathroom. I guess I should finish the bedroom first.

If you were near a C2 dealer, I've got the perfect match for SW French-Roast as I mentioned....

Matching INTO Aura should be easy, since there's more colorant choices.

ACE's E=Blue; T=is an Orange-ish Yellow; KX=White.
Red-bases are factory-tinted with POWDERED Red colorant.
With most paints out there, there's no chance of hitting some colors unless the BASE ITSELF starts out that way...

Faron

Thank you, faron79! Unfortunately there are no C2 dealers in Arizona. I wonder why my BM dealer is so skittish about matching? Maybe I'm talking to the wrong person. I could try another location in town (all Ace stores).

I had painted my kitchen SW Softer tan and than changed my mind to red....long story short...2 coats of Behr paint with primer (premium plus) gave me a rich, dark, beautiful, finish which I will soon be painting over because I changed mi mind...AGAIN! I strongly recommend the product.

Dawn25-
You're welcome!
(I hope you're not on FIRE down there...Holy Moly! I WISH we could give you even HALF of the excess water here in ND! You wouldn't have water problems the rest of the year...)

Yeah, just ask different dealers/personnel about tweaking matches, and give the store time. My C2 formula would be meaningless at any other dealer, since most C2 colorants are unique (16 total available. 99% of other lines have 9-12 at most.)
French Roast goes into the deepest tint-base obvously.

I'm intimately familiar with ACE's stuff too.
...cleaning colorant off my hands everyday....;-)

Faron

Another paint brand you should check out is Devine. Miller Paints carries it in my area but you can check their store locator for your state.

It's wonderful to work with and the reds cover in 2 coats without primer. They offer sample packets of all the colors and also 8" x 11" sample sheets.

Here is a link that might be useful: Devine

Ben. Moore Aura Caliente !!!!

I used it in my kitchen. It only took 1 coat to cover by rolling and 2 coats for the cutting by brush. I did paint using a really nice roller and it went over a beige, but I was really impressed by it. It's also a low VOC paint.