The Good: Good paint, Excellent color range, Goes on easy, Difficult to clean up, Warranty, No odor
The Bad: Expensive
The Basics: An ideal paint for ceilings or high traffic areas, Olympic Premium Ceiling Paint lives up to a do-it-yourselfer's expectations, despite the expense!
It is hard not to love the way products get repackaged in order to meet different niches. When I abandoned my house a few years back, I did so right after trying to make a home for my partner at the time and we had repainted a room entirely to attempt to make it feel more "ours." She is long gone now and following the move, I fell in love again and my new wife and I have set about making our meager space in the house we share with my mother ours through a bunch of home improvement projects. As a result, we recently repainted our upstairs apartment and to get rid of the white walls, we started with some of the leftover paint from my old house. The thing was, we were using Olympic Premium Interior Latex Satin Paint before we had to get a new can of paint. When we did, we picked up the Olympic Premium Ceiling Paint.
Olympic Premium Ceiling Paint is essentially the identical product to the Olympic Premium Interior Latex paint, save that it is thicker and it is available in different lusters than the simple and direct satin finish paint. Olympic Premium is a high-quality brand and the Olympic Premium Ceiling Paint lives up to the quality of the rest of the brand. More than just worthwhile for the warranty, in painting with my wife, we discovered the Ceiling Paint went on smoother than the regular Interior Latex paint because it was thicker. So, while it takes a little more than the standard paint to coat a roller and get a wall painted, the paint is thicker and seems more solid on walls and ceilings than the regular product we used on our walls to begin with!
Olympic has been making paints since 1938, so between a brand that is recognizable and a retailer that I have a pretty strong impression will still be in business in 50 years, I felt confident buying a gallon of the Olympic Premium Ceiling Paint for our new bedroom. We purchased it at Lowe's and there we found that we could get the Ceiling Paint mixed and colored.
First off, when it came to color selection, this Olympic Premium brand has a wealth of choices. While I'm sure there are color matching machines that will allow this to be tinted in virtually any color, there were (literally) over five hundred color choices available for the ceiling paint that were already in the system a Lowe's. That amount of choices makes it very easy to find a color for virtually any room or surface.
Second, as with other Olympic Premium products, there is a 25 year warranty with the ceiling paint and what differentiates this from other Olympic Premium paints and regular Olympic paints is the thickness of the paint. Having used lesser paints before (and, sadly, since), I can attest that this paint is thicker. In terms anyone can understand, this is more of a sludge than a liquid; more like a tar than water. I likened the Interior Latex paint to syrup; this is even thicker, more like lukewarm tar. This makes it a little more difficult to spread on surfaces, but it does insure that the paint does not drip when one is painting ceilings or walls! This is a great selling point as it means that the paint goes on thicker, coating any surface in one pass. The added cost means that while the product might not go quite so far, it virtually eliminates the need to go back and paint a second coat. Versus the 15 year warranty standard (not premium) interior latex satin paint from Olympic, I would say this went roughly 7/8 as far. Meaning, I got maybe 1/8 a gallon more out of the cheaper stuff in terms of coverage, but I had to do a second coat. This makes the premium paint a better value as I only had to use 1 gallon (and one coat!), as opposed to 2 gallons (or, more honestly 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 gallons) of the cheaper stuff. In this way, despite being a bit thicker than the interior latex paint, the Ceiling Paint actually got the same amount of coverage, though it was still less than the non-premium product.
As someone who is not a professional painter, this product was a great choice for repainting rooms and ceilings. Like many people, I was starting with white walls. My colors ranged from dark blue to a light sky blue. Painting at night, without the benefit of natural light, it was obvious where the paint was covering, even with light colors. The dark colors provide a great contrast, making it obvious and clear where has been painted. When painting the ceiling with light colors (on a stucco ceiling), it was clear where I had painted and that cannot always be said. I'm attributing that to the thickness of the paint. The coverage was clear, thick and it stuck. As well, we had no problem finding a wide variety of colors to choose from for this paint when we purchased it at Lowe's.
As well, painting on the stucco ceiling offered me a great opportunity to observe and comment on the coverage. Rough surfaces like stucco usually require multiple passes in order to fully cover an area. The Olympic Premium Ceiling Paint covered in a single stroke of my roller. One roll forward and surface was painted. Of course, I had to go back to roll the roller through the paint, but every time it was coated, it coated the surface of the ceiling without missing any spots. The coverage was incredible and it spread perfectly.
As well, there was no drippage while I was painting the ceiling. Because the paint is thicker, it acts more like glue, sticking to the surface, especially the ceiling. I tend to coat my roller liberally and as a result, I would have expected drippage, but there was none with the Olympic Premium Ceiling Paint. As well, it was very easy when I was painting the walls, to even out spots where I had been too liberal at the top with covering my roller, so even when wet, the places where too much paint may have initially been applied are obvious. So, if you're a sloppy painter, mistakes may be evened out very easily.
This is a great product for anyone who is doing repainting as it basically requires mixing, pouring, applying to a brush or roller and coating your surface. It worked fine on both primed and unprimed surfaces and coated fully. The can recommends the surface be primed, but I had no difficulties on some unprimed wood. The coverage was as good as on the primed wall. I've used this paint on stucco, sheetrock, plasterwall and wood, with equal results.
As well, there was virtually no odor with this paint. I tend to paint in the evening and by noon the next day, the newly painted walls were dry and there was no smell. Truth be told, the rooms I've been painting have poor ventilation and air circulation and I've had to have them closed off so my cats and dog did not "repaint" after I painted the walls. In less than a day, even under those conditions, the paint dried and the minimal smell dissipated.
This paint comes off rollers and brushes real easy with running water. Like all latex paints, it cleans up with soap and water until it dries, so as long as you don't leave your brush or roller laying around to dry before cleaning it up, it will be very easy to clean your tools up. It is not easy to clean up when droplets fall on surfaces I did not want them on and go unnoticed. So, for example, when I was painting the walls about a week after I painted the ceiling, I got a few very dark drops on the ceiling. Most of the paint came off, but it was impossible for me to get the rest off without stripping off the paint I had painted the prior week. On the plus side, the ceiling paint held up under my angry, frantic scrubbing to try to get the new, wet paint off. Ultimately, I wanted a paint that was durable and my inability to get the paint fully off the ceiling when I splattered it reassured me that this paint is the real deal. It's going to coat, it's going to coat well and it's not going to come off, even when I scrub! That means it might actually last the 25 years it's warrantied for.
The paint is warrantied for 25 years, guaranteed not to chip, wear off or wash off. The Ceiling Paint held up when painter's tape was stuck on it, something other Olympic Premium products I've used have not always done. This paint is expensive, but it seems to work well-enough to justify the price.
This is a great paint for those who are investing in a house and plan to be in it for some time. Between being a great product that is remarkably easy to work with, this paint is sold regularly from a retailer that will be around and is from a company that is well-established and does not appear to be going anywhere. And despite being called Ceiling Paint, it does not clump or drip in any way that is problematic when used on walls, floors or doors. In fact, I tend to recommend this paint for high-traffic areas because experience has shown it does not chip off or wear poorly, making it a good paint for surfaces more active than a ceiling!
For other paint product reviews, please check out my reviews of:
Z Pro 24 Paint Tray
Linzer 6 1/2" Pipe Roller
Shur-Line Teflon Paint Roller Cover
8/10
For other home improvement product reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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