Painting can be a hassle. It’s not only messy and time consuming, but choosing a paint color can feel like a chore at times, rather than the best part of the experience. While brands like Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams count their endless selection of color swatches as a good thing, two new paint brands Clare and Backdrop were started with the simple idea that painting, in particular choosing the right paint color should be easier.
Backdrop founder Natalie Ebel wanted to get rid of all of the steps that make choosing and buying paint a painful process—trekking to the hardware store, the going through hundreds of color chips, and getting messy pints of color. Instead she is taking the opposite approach with a tightly curated color palette that makes the selection process way easier to handle. Instead, people can choose from 50 curated colors that have hashtag-able names like Tanlines (warm, deep yellow), Self Portrait (oxblood), Saturday On Sunday (blue-green), and Negroni (orange-red). The paints feel custom-designed for millennial taste—both color and lifestyle. When you see a color you like, Backdrop sends a $2 12-by-12-inch removable swatch that adheres to the wall. Paint runs $45 a gallon.
Clare was started by interior designer Nicole Gibbons. Striving to be the next a millennial-friendly one-stop-shop for all things paint, they have created The Clare Color Genius, a digital color consultation quiz of sorts, that uses a proprietary algorithm to give you personalized paint color recommendations based on your current furniture, lighting conditions, and more. The line offers 55 pigments, with each gallon of wall paint or trim paint costing $49. Instead of paint chips, Clare also sends samples as adhesive squares that stick to the wall, which makes it easier to see if the color is a fit. In addition to cans of paint, the company also offers supplies including trays, roller frames, and multi-piece paint kits.