Review: Valspar Paint from B&Q

If you remember, back last year when we moved in, I made a new nursery for my Beastie Boy. I’ve been planning a mini make-over for the past couple of months to make his room less of a babies room and more of a little boy’s room. I didn’t want to spend a fortune, just a few quick fixes to update it a little.

I originally thought about painting a whole feature wall, but then decided that I was just going to paint a giant star on the wall over the mantelpiece in his room. ‘Vega’ is the name of a star in the constellation Lyra, so it seemed quite fitting! With a little perfect timing, I was offered the chance to review some ‘Valspar’ paint. Valspar are a paint mixing system, exclusively available from B&Q. They also have the ‘Mumsnet Rated’ seal of approval – 94% of Mumsnet testers said they would recommend the product to a friend and 96% said that they would buy Valspar Premium Walls & Ceilings paint.

We took a trip to B&Q the other week to pick out our paint {and do a few other jobs while we were that end of town}. I knew roughly the shade we were going for, but was amazed when I found that they have a spectrum of 2,000 preselected shades to choose from in store! My kiddos loved looking at all the paint chips and picking out their favourite colours. The shop assistant was incredibly helpful, chatting away to the kids for ages, and me about the paint. When we finally picked a shade we liked, she was kind enough to talk the children through the process of how the machine mixes the colour – and let them watch too. It was pretty fascinating to see the machine squirt in a few primary colours and then watch the can be shaken around and see our chosen colour magically appear at the end!

We picked the Valspar ® Premium Walls & Ceilings in matt. The paint is designed to withstand the wear and tear of everyday life, making it ideal for a family home. It apparently will hold its colour even after hundreds of scrubs, meaning you can scrub away handprints or crayon marks easily! Valspar can also colour match any colour your eye can see – some 2.2 million shades! Their machine can scan a book, or some fabric or wallpaper and create a can of paint perfectly matched!

What I thought

The paint itself was lovely, low odour {a really important factor when you’re using it in children’s rooms} and really easy to paint with. The wall I painted on has textured paper on, and it’s not always the easiest surface to paint. The Valspar paint covered it easily and was really easy to apply. I applied to coats of paint, mainly because of the textured paper, but on a smooth wall one coat would have been fine – the coverage is really impressive. I’ve done lots of decorating over the years, and this is by far the best paint I’ve used.

When we bought the paint, we spotted that Valspar also sold packs of glitter – so I picked up some silver glitter to add some sparkle to the star! They recommend one pack of glitter per litre of paint. I painted the first coat in plain paint, then poured a little of the paint {maybe 250ml} into a separate container and mixed tin the glitter – so the effect is intensified and looks fabulous {not sure you can see the glitter so well in these photos, but it looks fantastic in real life!}.

I’m really pleased with the paint, and how the star turned out. We’re planning on doing some more decorating over the coming months and will certainly be using Valspar paints for future projects.

I was gifted the Valspar paint in exchange for the review, but all comments, opinions and thoughts are my own.