Ways to Use Leftover Paint

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, leftover paint is the largest volume material collected by hazardous materials collection sites and costs local governments a lot of money to deal with. The EPA estimates that 10 percent of the house paint purchased each year ends up discarded. There's got to be a better way.

Here are some alternatives to disposing of that leftover paint:

Mix New Paint: if you have two similar types of paint (i.e. two different colors, but both water-based paint), then try blending to come up with a unique color for another project.

Use for Base Coat: if leftover water-based paint in lighter than the top coat of another project, you can use it as a base. This works especially well if the existing wall color is dark.

Paint Small Projects: get creative! Try painting your mailbox with leftovers. Experiment with what you have.

Save it for Touch-Ups: may be the most obvious option, but a practical one nonetheless.

Check out 10 Uses for Leftover Paint for more ideas!

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Comments:

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If you save paint, it might be a few years before you find another use for it. So how you store it is important.

If I have a small amount left in a gallon can, I transfer the remaining paint to a glass canning jar (or any right-size jar). This conserves paint because:

1) A metal can that has been opened and closed several times might not seal as well as when new, whereas a jar seals securely.

2) The air inside the can cause the remaining paint to skim over. When paint is stored in a jar, there is less air, and less surface exposure to the air.

3) I have stored paint in cans for more than a decade, and then when I reopened it, I found the can interior had corroded, and there were chips of rust in the paint. Glass doesn't corrode.

4) It takes less space to store paint in a jar than in a gallon can. (This doesn't really conserve paint, unless you are inclined to get rid of it to save space.)

Aside from this, it is important to label paint what you save, including a color dab on the label. I find I do forget which paint this was, even if I can see the color through the glass. This is because wet and dry paint are not the exact same color. I might have also done remixing with the leftover paint, but a decade later might not recall that.

We also store paint where it is not exposed to freezing temperatures, as this seems to affect some paints.

My oldest paint stored in jars is almost twenty years old. It has been used to paint a toy box and a curb-gleaned cabinet, and I still have a pint left. I kept the toy box because my daughter painted it with original art when she was about ten. Recently I hauled it out the attic to use for toys for grandchildren. The paint needed to be touched up. I found right jar of paint, which was still good and matched perfectly.

Posted by Carol on June 29, 2010 8:01 PM

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thank you for this article on how to store paint. i'm fixin to have my mouldings painted in the spring, behr.com just had a sale on their top-rated paints, so i purchased what i was told will be twice what i need. i'd only bought a gallon, but half of that would have been nearly the same price. so having wisely kept enough jars to pack the leftover paint in, i should have enough for touchups as well as any odds-and-ends for another 5 to 20 years

Posted by EmmaPeel on February 10, 2012 6:09 PM

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