There are 153 different paint brush configurations available from Purdy Professional Painting Tools, all handcrafted by skilled brush makers and customized to put a perfect finish on whatever you’ll be painting next.
That total may sound like an overstatement, but according to brush and application expert Connie McKinney of Sherwin-Williams, the number starts with a variety of brush sizes, each designed to meet a painter’s need for speed and precision.
Some of these sizes are available in different brush styles that are customized to achieve finish quality for whatever project you may be completing. Add to that a variety of filament blends that can be matched to a coating technology to achieve the best performance possible, as well as 11 different handle styles to match personal preference.
If all these options seem overwhelming, don’t worry. Sherwin-Williams store personnel can direct you to the best brush for the task at hand. Whether it’s a wall brush for maximized productivity, an angle sash designed for corners, or a brush designed for an innovative new coating product, they will help you make the perfect choice for every job.
The unique Purdy-Sherwin-Williams connection
The relationship with Sherwin-Williams makes such brush customization a uniquely Purdy offering, according to McKinney. (Purdy is part of the Consumer Brands group operated by Sherwin-Williams.)
“We’re an applicator company that’s owned by a paint company, so we are aware of paint trends far earlier than any of our competitors,” says McKinney. “As the paint labs are developing paint, if they’re seeing an application issue, sometimes they’ll reformulate the paint, but they can also call the applicator lab and either recommend a different applicator or help to develop a new applicator for this coating or polymer.”
The advent of low-VOC coatings in the last decade, for example, brought this benefit to light.
“As labs were working on low-VOC coatings, they were finding that a) coatings were drying faster than they used to due to the new chemistry, and b) the new coatings were much thicker,” McKinney says. “So we immediately saw a need for a firmer brush in the market, and that’s why XL Elite was the first line we developed that had a firmer feel to it.
“Since then, we’ve developed ClearCut Elite, Chinex Elite, and they were all stiffer than brushes in the past. Chinex even has easy clean-up characteristics, and that helps when coatings are drying fast.”
Listening to the pros
Similarly, the Purdy product team is regularly in the field with true end users testing new product formulations, which uniquely positions the company to apply such pro-level feedback from contractors to their brush product line.
“We survey a lot of pro painters right now,” McKinney says. “One of the biggest hurdles they face is finding quality skilled labor. Many of them are looking for higher productivity in any way they can find it, so we’ve been designing and creating new brush shapes and sizes for them. For example, our XL High Capacity brushes now have a unique, high-capacity, oval-shaped ferrule that no one else has — it holds a tremendous amount of filament and therefore a tremendous amount of paint, giving painters fewer trips into the bucket and more time on the wall.
“Listening to the painter and getting that info back in real time really defines what we can offer the market next.”
For a complete list of Purdy brushes and other painting equipment, visit the Sherwin-Williams contractor website.