If you’ve started researching paint for your next project, you’ve probably already landed on the two biggest names in the industry: Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams. These are the brands that professional painters, interior designers, and serious homeowners come back to time and again—and for good reason. Both companies produce high-quality paint that outperforms anything you’ll find at a big-box store. But that doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable.
As a painting company that works in apartments, brownstones, co-ops, and commercial spaces across New York City every single day, we’ve applied thousands of gallons of both Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams products. We’ve seen how each brand performs on old plaster walls in pre-war buildings, in steamy Manhattan bathrooms, on high-traffic hallway walls in Brooklyn walk-ups, and on freshly skim-coated surfaces in new construction. We know where each brand shines—and where it falls short.
This guide is our honest, experience-based breakdown of Benjamin Moore vs Sherwin Williams. We’ll walk you through the science behind paint quality, compare their most popular product lines head-to-head, and help you make a decision that actually fits your project, your budget, and the realities of painting in New York City.
The Science Behind Paint Quality: Why It Actually Matters
Before we compare specific products, it helps to understand what separates a great paint from an average one. At its core, every can of paint contains four things: pigments, binders (resins), solvents (usually water in modern latex paints), and additives. The ratio of these ingredients—especially what gets left behind on your wall after the water evaporates—determines everything about how the paint looks, covers, and holds up over time.
The term professionals use is “volume solids,” and it refers to the percentage of the paint that remains on the surface after drying. Think of it this way: when you roll paint onto a wall, the water evaporates and the solids stay behind to form the actual film. A paint with higher volume solids leaves behind a thicker, more durable, more pigment-rich film. That means better coverage per coat, richer color, and a tougher surface that resists scuffing, staining, and fading.
The primary hiding pigment in virtually all paint is titanium dioxide. This is the ingredient that gives paint its opacity—the ability to cover whatever color or imperfection is underneath. Higher concentrations of titanium dioxide generally mean better one-coat coverage and a more uniform finish. The binder, meanwhile, is the glue that holds everything together. It determines how well the paint adheres to the surface, how flexible the dried film is, and how resistant it is to moisture, scrubbing, and UV damage. Premium acrylic resins create a stronger, more elastic film than cheaper alternatives, which is why high-end paints from both brands hold up significantly longer than contractor-grade products.
Understanding this chemistry isn’t just academic. When you’re comparing a $45 gallon of paint to a $90 gallon, the difference in volume solids, pigment quality, and resin technology is where that price gap lives. And in a city like New York where labor costs are high, using a paint that covers in two coats instead of three doesn’t just save on materials—it saves hours of work that translate directly to what you pay your painter.
Benjamin Moore’s Product Lineup: What We Recommend and Why
Benjamin Moore organizes its products into clearly tiered lines, and understanding the hierarchy helps you choose wisely. At the top sits Aura, which is their flagship premium interior paint. Aura features proprietary Color Lock technology that permanently bonds pigments to the resin, preventing fading and ensuring that touch-ups blend seamlessly months or even years after the original application. With volume solids in the 40–48% range depending on the sheen, Aura builds a thick, durable film that provides exceptional coverage. It’s the paint we tend to recommend for living rooms, dining rooms, and any space where color accuracy and longevity matter most. The downside is price—Aura typically runs around $90–$100 per gallon, which adds up fast in larger spaces.
Regal Select is the line we use most frequently on our projects, and it’s the one we recommend to most homeowners. It shares the same Gennex color technology as Aura, offers excellent coverage with roughly 45% volume solids, and comes in five sheens. The New York Times named it the best interior paint on the market, and from our experience, that’s well-deserved. It strikes the best balance between premium performance and reasonable cost at roughly $75–$85 per gallon. If you’re weighing different sheen options for your walls, Regal Select gives you the most flexibility with finishes ranging from flat to semi-gloss.
Below Regal Select, Benjamin Moore offers Ben (their entry-level consumer paint around $55 per gallon) and Ultra Spec 500 (a contractor-grade product designed for commercial and multi-unit work). Ben is fine for bedrooms or low-traffic areas, but it contains fewer titanium dioxide solids and won’t hold up as well in busy spaces. Ultra Spec 500 is what many landlords and property managers use for apartment turnover painting—it’s affordable and zero-VOC, but it definitely sacrifices some coverage and durability compared to Regal Select.
For trim, doors, and cabinetry, Benjamin Moore’s Advance line is in a class of its own. This waterborne alkyd hybrid flows and levels like an oil-based paint but cleans up with water and has low VOCs. It produces a beautifully smooth, hard finish that resists yellowing—a common problem with older oil-based paints.
Sherwin Williams Product Lineup: Where It Competes
Sherwin Williams also offers a tiered product range, though the naming conventions can be a bit less intuitive. Their premium line is Emerald, which competes directly with Benjamin Moore’s Aura. Emerald uses advanced acrylic resin technology, offers excellent stain resistance and washability, and comes in at roughly $85–$95 per gallon. It’s a very good paint, and we’ve used it successfully on many projects. Sherwin Williams also offers Emerald Designer Edition, which adds ceramic microsphere technology for enhanced durability and a smoother finish.
Duration is the next tier down and roughly competes with Regal Select, though we’d argue it falls slightly behind in coverage. Duration typically retails around $70–$80 per gallon and offers solid overall performance. However, we’ve noticed that it can feel tacky longer than its stated dry time suggests, especially in humid conditions—something that matters quite a bit when you’re painting a New York apartment in July with the windows barely cracked.
SuperPaint is Sherwin Williams’ most popular product and sits in the mid-range at roughly $65–$70 per gallon. It offers respectable coverage and durability for the price and is a solid choice for general interior work. Below that, you’ll find ProMar 200 and ProMar 400, which are contractor-grade products used primarily for new construction and turnover work. ProMar 200 is serviceable for basic coverage, but ProMar 400 is genuinely thin and tends to need three or more coats to achieve a satisfactory finish.
For trim work, Sherwin Williams offers Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel, which is their answer to Benjamin Moore’s Advance. It’s a good product that provides a smooth, hard finish, though many painters in our circle—ourselves included—still give the edge to Advance for leveling and final appearance.
Head-to-Head: Coverage and Hiding Power
Coverage is where most painters form their strongest opinions, and it’s where we see the most consistent difference between these two brands. Benjamin Moore generally delivers better hide across comparable product lines, and the reason comes down to formulation. Benjamin Moore’s premium and mid-range products contain higher concentrations of titanium dioxide and higher volume solids than their Sherwin Williams counterparts. Aura and Regal Select typically range from 42–48% volume solids, while Emerald and Duration generally sit around 38–42%.
In practical terms, this means Benjamin Moore products more reliably cover in two coats, even when you’re going over a dark color or dealing with patched and primed areas that absorb paint differently than the surrounding wall. We’ve found that Sherwin Williams products—particularly Duration and SuperPaint—sometimes need a third coat in situations where Regal Select would have been done in two. When you’re dealing with visible roller marks or trying to achieve a perfectly uniform finish, that extra coat isn’t just about coverage. It affects the texture and overall appearance of the completed wall.
This matters more than it might sound, because in professional painting, labor is the biggest cost. An extra coat on a three-bedroom apartment doesn’t just mean another $50–$75 in paint—it means an additional half-day or more of work. So while a gallon of Regal Select costs more upfront than a gallon of SuperPaint, the total project cost often evens out or even tips in Benjamin Moore’s favor.
That said, Sherwin Williams SuperPaint does perform admirably for its price tier, and in head-to-head coverage tests on primed drywall, it holds its own against Benjamin Moore Ben. The real separation happens at the premium level, where Aura consistently outcovers Emerald in our experience.
Color Selection, Accuracy, and Why It Matters in NYC
Benjamin Moore offers over 3,500 colors—more than double Sherwin Williams’ approximately 1,700 options. But the sheer number isn’t what gives Benjamin Moore the edge here. It’s the accuracy and consistency of those colors that makes the bigger difference in practice.
Benjamin Moore’s Gennex color system uses proprietary waterborne colorants that are specifically formulated to work with their paint bases. Because the colorants and the base are designed as an integrated system, the colors mix more precisely and hold their trueness over time. This is particularly important with light neutrals and whites, which are by far the most popular colors we’re asked to paint in New York City apartments. Benjamin Moore’s white tint base is noticeably cleaner and brighter than Sherwin Williams’, which skews slightly grayer. That subtle difference becomes very obvious when you’re looking at a freshly painted white wall next to bright natural light streaming through a window.
Sherwin Williams uses their ColorCast Ecotoner system, which is a solid low-VOC tinting technology that produces consistent results. It works well, and for mid-tones and saturated colors, most people won’t see a meaningful difference between the two brands. But for the whites, off-whites, and light grays that dominate modern NYC interiors—think Simply White, White Dove, Chantilly Lace, Classic Gray—Benjamin Moore’s cleaner base gives it a real advantage.
Color matching between brands is something we’re frequently asked about. Clients will sometimes bring in a Benjamin Moore color and ask us to mix it in Sherwin Williams to save a few dollars per gallon. We generally advise against this. Because each brand uses different base formulations and colorant systems, a color-matched paint will look close on the swatch but can shift noticeably under different lighting conditions. In small NYC apartments where a single room might transition from bright window light to warm artificial light throughout the day, those subtle shifts become much more apparent.
Both brands offer color consultation services, which can be valuable if you’re struggling to commit. Benjamin Moore provides consultations through their independent retailers, and Sherwin Williams offers free virtual consultations plus in-home visits for PaintPerks members. In our experience, the personalized advice you get at a local Benjamin Moore store in Manhattan or Brooklyn tends to be more tailored, simply because those shop owners know the building stock, the light conditions, and the design trends specific to the city.
Durability, Washability, and Real-World Performance
Both brands make durable paints at their premium tiers, but durability manifests differently depending on what you’re asking the paint to withstand. For interior walls in a typical apartment, durability mainly comes down to scuff resistance and washability—how well the paint holds up to everyday contact and how easily you can wipe away marks without damaging the finish.
Benjamin Moore’s Regal Select and Aura both excel here. The higher resin content creates a tougher, more elastic film that resists scuffing and can be cleaned aggressively without burnishing or wearing through. Scuff-X, which is part of Benjamin Moore’s commercial line, takes this even further with ceramic technology specifically designed for high-traffic areas like hallways, stairwells, and common areas in multi-unit buildings.
Sherwin Williams Emerald also offers excellent washability and stain resistance, and in some independent tests, it performs comparably to Aura in scrub resistance. Duration is solid but tends to show scuffs more readily than Regal Select, particularly in eggshell and satin sheens. When paint starts cracking or checking prematurely, it’s often a sign of poor adhesion or a low-quality paint film that can’t flex with the natural expansion and contraction of the substrate—something we see more frequently with lower-tier products from both brands.
For exterior applications, Sherwin Williams arguably holds a slight edge with their Duration Exterior and Emerald Exterior lines, which use advanced resin technology to resist cracking, chalking, and peeling in harsh weather conditions. Benjamin Moore’s Aura Exterior is also excellent, but contractors working in extreme climates often give Sherwin Williams the nod for exteriors specifically.
In terms of paint longevity, premium products from both brands will last 7–10 years or more on interior walls under normal conditions. Mid-range products like Regal Select and Duration typically hold up for 5–8 years. Contractor-grade products from either brand will generally start showing wear within 3–5 years, particularly in high-traffic areas. If you’re curious about what impacts how long your paint job lasts, the substrate preparation, existing surface conditions, and the number of previous coats of paint already on your walls all play significant roles.
Pricing Breakdown: What You’ll Actually Spend
Let’s talk real numbers, because price is often the deciding factor. Here’s a general comparison of the most commonly used products from each brand, based on typical retail pricing:
- Benjamin Moore Aura: $90–$100/gallon
- Sherwin Williams Emerald: $85–$95/gallon
- Benjamin Moore Regal Select: $75–$85/gallon
- Sherwin Williams Duration: $70–$80/gallon
- Benjamin Moore Ben: $50–$60/gallon
- Sherwin Williams SuperPaint: $65–$70/gallon
- Benjamin Moore Ultra Spec 500: $38–$45/gallon
- Sherwin Williams ProMar 200: $35–$45/gallon
A few important caveats. First, Sherwin Williams frequently runs 30–40% off sales at their corporate-owned stores, which can dramatically change the value calculation. Benjamin Moore retailers occasionally offer sales too, but the discounts tend to be smaller and less predictable since each store is independently owned. Second, prices in New York City tend to run slightly higher than national averages at both brands.
When you’re hiring a professional painter, the paint cost typically represents only 15–20% of the total project price. The rest is labor, preparation, materials, and overhead. If you want a realistic sense of what painters typically charge in the city, the per-gallon difference between brands is far less significant than the quality of preparation work and application technique. Spending an extra $10–$15 per gallon on better paint is almost always worth it when you factor in the labor savings from better coverage and the longer lifespan of the finished job.
NYC-Specific Considerations: Availability, VOCs, and Building Realities
Painting in New York City comes with challenges that most national paint comparison guides completely ignore, so let’s address the factors that actually matter if you live here.
Store availability is a practical consideration. Sherwin Williams operates corporate-owned locations, and you’ll find them throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens with fairly consistent inventory. Benjamin Moore distributes through independently owned retailers—stores like Janovic, Loconsolo Paints, and various neighborhood hardware stores. The good news for NYC residents is that both brands have excellent coverage in the city. You won’t struggle to find either one within a reasonable distance, which isn’t always the case in suburban or rural areas where Benjamin Moore retailers can be scarce.
VOC regulations matter here too. New York has some of the strictest air quality regulations in the country, and if you’re painting in a co-op or condo, your building may have its own rules about paint fumes and ventilation. Both Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams offer extensive zero-VOC and low-VOC product lines. Benjamin Moore’s Natura line is completely zero-VOC and virtually odorless, making it ideal for occupied apartments where you can’t exactly throw open all the windows—especially during winter. Sherwin Williams’ Harmony line serves a similar purpose. For a deeper look at how VOC content affects indoor air quality and what it means for your health, especially in the tight quarters of a New York apartment, understanding these ratings before you buy is important.
Humidity and drying conditions in NYC apartments can be brutal on paint. Older buildings with steam heat can swing from bone-dry in winter to extremely humid in summer, and this cycling causes walls to expand and contract, stressing the paint film. We’ve noticed that Benjamin Moore products, particularly Regal Select, tend to handle this stress slightly better due to their higher resin content, which creates a more flexible film. Sherwin Williams’ premium lines perform well too, but Duration in particular seems to struggle more with extended dry times in humid conditions, which can lead to issues like paint peeling away from the surface if a second coat is applied before the first has fully cured.
Lead paint considerations are relevant for any pre-war building in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or elsewhere in the city. When painting over old surfaces that may contain lead, proper preparation and encapsulation matter far more than the topcoat brand. However, both Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams offer primers designed to encapsulate lead paint, and either brand can serve this purpose effectively when applied over properly prepared surfaces.
So Which Should You Choose? Our Professional Recommendation
After years of using both brands extensively, here’s our honest take.
For most interior residential work in New York City—apartments, brownstones, lofts—we lean toward Benjamin Moore, specifically Regal Select for walls and Advance for trim. The coverage is consistently excellent, the color accuracy is unmatched (especially for the whites and neutrals that dominate NYC interiors), and the product handles the unique environmental challenges of city apartments better than comparably priced Sherwin Williams alternatives. It’s the paint we stock on our trucks and use on the majority of our projects.
For budget-conscious projects like rental turnover or basic refreshes where maximum durability isn’t the priority, Sherwin Williams SuperPaint or ProMar 200 during a sale can deliver acceptable results at a lower per-gallon cost.
For commercial spaces and high-traffic areas like lobbies, hallways, and offices, Benjamin Moore Scuff-X is genuinely hard to beat. Its ceramic-reinforced formula shrugs off scuffs and marks that would ruin a standard eggshell finish. Additionally, Benjamin Moore’s Command line is our favorite for particularly difficult areas like floors and building exteriors.
Ultimately, both brands produce excellent paint. You won’t make a bad choice picking either one at the premium or mid-premium tier. The key mistakes we see are people choosing the cheapest product from a great brand and expecting premium results, or skimping on surface preparation and blaming the paint when it doesn’t perform. A $100 gallon of Aura applied over poorly prepared walls will look worse than a $70 gallon of SuperPaint on properly primed and sanded surfaces. The paint matters, but preparation matters more.
Ready to Get Your Project Started?
Choosing the right paint is just one piece of a great painting project—surface preparation, application technique, and experienced craftsmanship are what make the real difference. At Soho Painters, we bring all of those elements together on every job, whether it’s a studio apartment refresh or a full-scale commercial build-out.
We offer professional interior painting services throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, and we’re happy to help you navigate product selection as part of any project. If you’re ready for a fresh coat—or just want to talk through your options—reach out to us for a free estimate. We also specialize in apartment painting for co-ops, condos, and rentals, so whether your building has specific requirements or you just want the job done right, we’ve got you covered.
