Dear Olympic Paint,

I purchased one gallon of your Interior Flat Paint (15 year warranty, tinted C11-2 River Reed) at my local Lowe’s store yesterday.

This paint is awful.

River Reed is a pale green color. I was painting drywall over a white primer and using a smooth-surface roller. A quality paint in this light of a color would have covered the primed surface cleanly in one coat. A mid-quality paint might have taken two. And while I am perfectly aware that this is not the top-of-the-line paint that your competitors Behr and Ralph Lauren produce, there is NO REASON that you should sell a product that takes THREE COATS of a pale color to produce a decent finish on a smooth-surfaced, primed, previously white wall. I’d hate to see what this paint looks like in a dark color. Even Glidden does better.

I followed all instructions and stirred the paint thoroughly, prepped the surface, used the correct roller type and so on. All I wanted to do was put a quick, fresh coat of paint on a room as I am preparing to sell my house. This paint was a waste of not only the cost of a gallon, but also the cost of the paint roller, the tray liner, the painter’s tape, and the dropcloth. Is this shoddy result and waste of money what Olympic intends for its cost-conscious customers?

I sincerely hope not.

Tomorrow, I will happily spend the extra $15 for a gallon of Behr or Ralph Lauren paint (total: three times the cost of this rotten paint) at my local Home Depot and save myself the hassle of dealing with the inferior Olympic paint I wasted my money on yesterday. When a paint is such a low quality that it cannot produce a clean finish of a light color applied with the recommended tools on a properly primed wall, you would do well to make some improvements in order to maintain your reputation as a dealer of quality paint products.

Sincerely,

Rebekah