Shrinkflation
I am painting our house and noticed the paint can reads 1 gallon 124 ounces. Has anyone else found other shrinkflation?
Robert Odd. I can't imagine only a 4 ounce reduction. Plus they would not state a gallon and less than a gallon in ounces Truth in advertising. Easy litigation target there I would gather. Perhaps a misprint? What is the brand and sub category of paint?
Yes shrinkflation is abundant and rampant in all sorts of products and certain services. It's one way to soften (deceive, mask) the devastating impact of inflation. It is impacting every single aspect of American life on most every citizen.
Greg A quick Google search stated the reduced "gallon" size of as little as 116 oz for some brands, is to allow for additional paint for tinting to a specific color. Sounds plausible. However, any paint that is not sold as a tintable base and is a ready to use color should have the full 128 ounces or very close to it. I'd be curious to see if it does. It could simply be that in a bygone era, paint was sold by a pint, quart, gallon, 5 gallon, etc. I gather now it's easier to continue to refer to those sizes rather than say container of paint with the ounce as the indication of size. There are many people that would have no idea what 16, 64, 128 or even 640 ounce would be. LOL.
Coco Greg
In the "old days" (early 80's, lol), Glidden sold a white, but also light, medium, and deep tint bases. The regular white would be a full gallon, while the others would have a certain amount "missing", depending on how dark the final color was supposed to turn our. The paint samples had a number which corresponded to a formula in the master book, which would tell you which base to start with, then how many ounces of each tint to add to the base before resealing, shaking to mix, then testing for the customer's satisfaction.
Sherwin-Williams, however, would start with a color, then you'd add tint to that color to achieve the final product. I don't know how many ounces the paint was "short" in order to leave room for the tint product, but I know from experience that it was annoying as anything trying to get a gallon to gallon match with their paint! You first had the variation in the initial paint lots to begin with, then the possibility of how that would react with the tint itself, no matter how careful you were to add the same amount to each gallon.
I mention that because it is possible that the paint brand that Robert bought may have followed the old S-W model, rather than the Glidden model. Sherwin-Williams, from what I understand, changed their process to the Glidden model a number of years back, at least I believe that's what I remember. Initial paint compounding processes have gotten better since then, I imagine, so the lot to lot difference would hopefully be less, since they could compare samples with a colorimeter now.
Of course the way to mitigate any differences is to start and stop at a corner, and to make sure you start to mix part of the 2nd gallon in with the first when you come to that corner, in order that the paints are as indistinguishable as possible.
The last note was for anyone homeowner painting. Starting a brand new can of the "same" color halfway through a wall will very often be noticeable when it dries!
Phil D. Leave a Reply
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