Premium PlusBehr paint review

Why it happens. Burnishing. The flat and eggshell films do not take a hard scrub, so pressing on a greasy fingerprint polishes the matte finish instead of cleaning it. This is the honest deal-breaker for high-traffic rooms, and Marquee and Ultra both survive the same wipe.

The fix. There is no fix short of repainting the wall. Wipe gently and only when you have to. If a wet rag lands on that wall regularly, the room wanted Ultra or Marquee in the first place.

Why it happens. The film polishes from ordinary contact within the first year in any room that gets used. Light switches, door edges, and chair-rail height go first. In a bedroom you never notice. In a hallway with kids and a dog you see tracks by month eight.

The fix. This is a room-choice problem, not an application problem. Keep Premium Plus in bedrooms, ceilings, closets, and rentals, and spend up one rung anywhere hands land daily.

Why it happens. Premium Plus is not a stain blocker, whatever the shelf copy suggests. A water ring, tannin bleeding from knotty pine, or a nicotine wall comes straight back through the topcoat.

The fix. Spot-prime with a dedicated stain-blocking primer first, then two coats. Glossy or laminate surfaces need a bonding primer instead, and any deep color goes over a tinted primer.

Why it happens. It is discontinued. The old roll-on line — No. 1001 Smooth, No. 1002 Sand, and the No. 559 Popcorn ceiling finish with reinforcing fibers — is gone from Behr's current catalog. Listings that still show it are old stock, an archived safety data sheet, or a pin from a decade ago.

The fix. Use BEHR PRO Acrylic Texture Coating No. PR710 for walls and masonry, BEHR PREMIUM Textured Spray Paint for small pieces, or stir a universal texture additive into regular Premium Plus and keep the color deck. And ignore the Premium Plus colors named Fresh Popcorn and Popcorn Ball, which are colors, not textures.

For the price, yes, with limits. At $33 to $43 a gallon it hides cleanly in two coats, smells mild, and carries a zero-VOC GREENGUARD Gold cert. It is a solid pick for bedrooms, ceilings, closets, and rental repaints. It scrubs and burnishes worse than Marquee, so it is the wrong paint for a kitchen or a kid hallway you wipe down weekly.

On a clean, previously painted wall in good shape, no. The paint-and-primer formula self-primes fine. You still need a dedicated primer in three cases: bare drywall in a deep or saturated color, a glossy or laminate surface, and any wall with water, tannin, smoke, or grease stains. Premium Plus is not a stain blocker, so spot-prime first or the stain bleeds through.

Plan on two. Over a similar existing color in flat or eggshell you can sometimes get away with one good coat, but going lighter over darker, or any saturated color, takes two. The hide is honest for the price, not one-coat magic. That claim belongs to Marquee, not this line.

Ultra sits one rung up at $44 to $52 a gallon, about $10 more. It hides better in fewer coats, scrubs harder, and adds real stain-blocking that Premium Plus does not have. Premium Plus is the value tier for low-traffic rooms. For a guest room you will repaint in five years, Premium Plus saves real money.

No, and this trips up anyone reading older reviews. Behr Premium Plus Ultra was the old name for what is now simply Behr Ultra, the mid-grade line one rung up with better hide and built-in stain blocking. Behr dropped the shared name in its rebrand around 2018, so any pre-2018 forum thread praising Premium Plus Ultra is describing Ultra, not this entry-level paint.

All of them. Any of Behr's 3,000-plus library colors can be tinted into Premium Plus at the Home Depot counter, and the untinted shelf can is Ultra Pure White. If the full deck is overwhelming, the Behr Designer Collection narrows it to 34 designer-approved whites, neutrals, and accents sold in Premium Plus. 8-oz samples let you test before committing, and deep colors use Deep Base and usually want an extra coat.

No. The old roll-on Premium Plus Texture Paint line — No. 1001 Smooth, No. 1002 Sand, and the No. 559 Popcorn ceiling finish with reinforcing fibers — is gone from Behr's current catalog. Today the texture options are BEHR PREMIUM Textured Spray Paint for small projects and the PRO-side Acrylic Texture Coating No. PR710 for walls and masonry, or you can stir a universal texture additive into regular Premium Plus. Home Depot listings for Fresh Popcorn or Popcorn Ball are color names, not textures.

Both exist as separate products. This review covers the interior paint-and-primer. PREMIUM PLUS Exterior is a 100% acrylic low-VOC paint-and-primer in flat, satin, and semi-gloss that runs $34 to $46 a gallon, wants two coats applied between 50 and 90°F, and carries a substrate-limited warranty rather than Marquee's lifetime one. Same value logic outside as inside: fine on sound, well-prepped, light-to-mid colors.

In the base, before tinting, yes: under 5 g/L in flat, eggshell, and satin, with GREENGUARD Gold and LEED compliance. Colorant pushes that up a little, most of all in deep saturated colors, which is the one place the label and the gallon in your cart diverge. In practice the smell is mild, the room airs out fast, and it is a defensible pick for a nursery or a bedroom you sleep in that night.