Benjamin Moore’s Aura VOC Free Paint Review
The positive? I spent a day in a small room painting and didn’t get high. The bad news. I spent the day in a room painting and didn’t get high. Seriously…no fumes. (VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds…little nasties for just about everything.) This stuff is fantastic…easy to work with, beautiful color, and the eggshell is not noticeably shiny but washable. 
This is the color of the boys’ room. In real life it is a little bluer looking. When the whole shabang is done, I will post actual room photos.
Wow. Expensive, but think of all those fumes the boys won’t be breathing in the coming years. That other stuff leaches out for a long time doesn’t it?
Wow. Seriously expensive paint. But worth it, especially since your little ones are in there. And you’d pay more for “standard” washable paint anyhow.
Good motivation to make certain no one colors on the walls!
Yes…I already warned my 4 year old who likes to lounge in bed reading with his feet on the wall that if he continues the practice he will end up with the nickname Nubs.
Love your blog! Thanks so much for this review, I shared on my site. For chemically sensitive people, “no fumes” is great news. I also like the “fantastic” and “easy to work with” parts.
I just painted my entire house with Aura paint and the results were outstanding. Coverage is excellent and durability is outstanding. Cleanup is a breeze and definitely no odor. Expensive paint to be sure but well worth it.
[...] other than the recently painted boys’ room, is in desperate need of a coat of paint. I used Benjamin Moore’s Aura for my son’s room and was very pleased with its VOCless goodiness. At $55, $60 with tax, a [...]
I love the paint, but hate the application. I have lines between each and every section. What’s the trick?
I cut the whole room, appy 1 coat, cut the 2nd, and apply 2nd. Dries so fast, I can’t make overlaps blend.
Help!
Just painted a hallway with Aura in bermuda teal, matte finish. The hallway does not have windows, so the liveliness of the color is very much appreciated. The process I used:
1. Cut in the whole room with a brush (to get the very corner) followed by a corner painting pad (to widen the cut-in.) I brushed the paint onto the pad, rather than dipping, to minimize drips. You have to press relatively hard to get good contact and coverage in corners. After each pass with a pad, feather out (with a semi-dry brush) the edges of where the pad touched, as there will otherwise be a visible bead of paint. You don’t have to be neat with this, as the only goal is to avoid the bead.
2. Allow the cut in paint to dry. This is CRITICAL. Waiting should not be an issue if you’ve got a reasonably large room – by the time you’ve finished cutting in, you should be ready to roll at the starting end of the room.
3. Paint with a well-saturated roller (almost but not quite drippy), one wall at a time, getting as close to the corner as you can. Unless you have an insanely large room, you should not have any issues maintaining a wet edge if you stick to one wall at a time. As you paint, have a strong worklight to highlight any beads of paint left by the roller edges (say, if you pressed the roller hard, or unevenly) and smooth them out by rolling over them lightly. Resist the temptation to touch up anything except what you just painted. Let any mistakes dry before retouching.
With adequate lighting, good loading of the roller, and using the above process, I was able to get beautiful even one coat coverage over a mix of unprimed spackle and existing white paint. The ceiling, which I had scraped to bare glossy plaster, required two coats. I found that Aura was a better primer on bare plaster than other primers I tried.
What I found to not work well, was using a roller that was too dry, using inadequate lighting, cutting in as I go (this would typically dry just enough by the time I got to it, to slough off into an ugly wrinkly mess), or not feathering the edges of the cut in area (left a visible bead.)
I also found that I got better results with one person painting than with two.
Actually, I should have said that I got even coverage over a mix of unprimed spackle and drywall, and existing white paint.
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[...] I did finally pick a color…which has been the majority of the hold up. I will be using Aura this time because Benjamin can make the color I want whereas Freshaire is limited to their stock. [...]