SHERWIN-WILLIAMS VS VALSPAR

They are one company with two very different storefronts. Sherwin-Williams sells through its own paint stores, with pro accounts, contractor product lines and staff who only sell coatings. Valspar is the consumer brand you buy at Lowe's and independent retailers. Contractors who buy every week usually run a Sherwin-Williams account; a homeowner painting a bedroom on a Saturday is well served by a Valspar paint-and-primer from Lowe's.

Sherwin-Williams announced its deal to buy The Valspar Corporation in 2016 and completed it on June 1, 2017, according to Sherwin-Williams' investor announcements. Valspar kept its own name, product lines and retail channel. Owning both lets the company sell in its own stores and on Lowe's shelves at the same time. It does not mean a Valspar can is a Sherwin-Williams product in different packaging.

Sherwin-Williams prices are list prices from its own website in October 2026, when they were shown at 40% off. Valspar does not publish prices on its own site; check the retailer. Valspar lists its three interior lines in flat, eggshell, satin and semi-gloss.

The same logic runs through our other brand comparisons: Benjamin Moore vs Sherwin-Williams (the two pro-store brands) and Behr vs Sherwin-Williams (Home Depot's brand against the pro store).

• Walls in a busy room: pick the scrub- and scuff-resistant tier of either brand; the interior wall paint guide compares tiers across brands.
• Trim and cabinets: use a true enamel, not a wall paint; see best paint for trim.
• Matching an existing wall: stay with the original brand and color for touch-ups.
• Sheen: decide it before the brand; the paint sheen guide covers each room.

Outside, both brands sell a ladder of acrylic house paints. Sherwin-Williams lists prices on its own site; Valspar describes each line by what it claims to resist.

The rows pair lines by their place in each brand's ladder, not by lab testing. Valspar lists its exterior lines in flat, satin and semi-gloss and does not publish prices on its site.

Owning both brands has not merged their fan decks. A Sherwin-Williams color code tinted into a Valspar base at a Lowe's counter, or the other way round, is a computer approximation built from a different base and pigment set. On a whole room it can look right; on a patch next to the original wall it often shows, especially in deep colors and in raking light.

• For touch-ups, buy the original brand, line and sheen. Sheen differences show as much as color.
• For a full repaint, brand switching is fine. Paint a sample board and look at it in the room at different times of day.
• Record brand, line, color code and sheen on the job file. The work order template has a line for each surface.
• Neutral colors are the most forgiving across brands; the neutral colors guide explains undertones.

On most professional jobs paint costs less than the labor to apply it, so the brand decision is rarely about the per-gallon price alone. A gallon that hides in two coats instead of three saves a crew a whole coat of labor. Run the gallons through the paint calculator and the hours through the labor cost calculator before deciding which line is cheaper for a given job.