As I prepare to paint over my Benjamin Moore Metallic glaze painted hallway (BM Studio Finishes Metallic Glaze in Veil Cream PT-370,) I thought I would share my experience with the paint for other people out there.

I actually love the metallic paint, it just didn’t work well in the space we tried to use it. It looks more metallic in person than these pictures, but does live up to it’s “subtle” claim, which is nice. The main reason we’re getting rid of it (besides the fact I didn’t love the color next to the color of our adjoining foyer) is that the walls in our hallway have 1) a fair amount of texture on them and 2) are old, have been poorly patched/poorly painted/etc many times. The metallic paint highlighted every single imperfection in the walls. I think for it to look best you have to start with very smooth walls, or want to highlight all your walls’ imperfections (not a bad thing necessarily, as long as it’s purposeful.)

 

The second biggest problem was the poor coverage. We painted just the glaze over white(ish) walls. We were painting a hallway with three walls – not a large space. After going through 3 quarts (at about $25 a quart) we still needed more paint. At this point we decided to stop, but I know we would have needed at least another full quart, and I suspect even more than that. If I was going to do it again (which I might, in a house with smoother walls) what I would do first is have a flat latex paint mixed in the same color as the glaze (in our case, Veil Cream,) get a good coat or two of that on, and then the glaze over it. I think if we had done this it would have saved a lot of time, frustration, and probably money.

Hopefully someone else will learn from our experience, as it is really beautiful paint, and part of me is very sad to be losing my silver hallway. And sad to be losing the many hours I’ve spent painting and the many dollars I’ve spent at BM.