Lowe's Home Improvement

Lowe's Home Improvement on South River Road stocks tools, hardware, lumber and paint in St. George. Exterior paint is the category where this climate is least forgiving, and where the difference between products is largest in practice.

How it works

Paint is pigment suspended in a binder. Pigment supplies color and opacity; the binder is the resin that forms the film, holds the pigment and sticks to the substrate. Ultraviolet light attacks the binder, breaking down the polymer at the surface until the film can no longer hold pigment particles, which is what chalking is - a powdery residue that transfers to a finger drawn across the wall. Fading follows separately as the pigments themselves degrade. Southern Utah applies both loads unusually hard: high elevation means less atmosphere filtering ultraviolet, clear skies mean more hours of direct exposure, and surface temperatures on a sunlit wall run far above the air temperature.

Several choices follow. One hundred percent acrylic binders hold up markedly better under ultraviolet exposure than vinyl acrylic blends, which is the main thing separating exterior lines. Color is a durability decision as much as an aesthetic one, since deeper shades carry more organic pigment, absorb more heat and fade faster than light shades built on inorganic pigments. Elevations do not weather equally - south and west walls take the overwhelming share of the load and will need attention years before north and east ones. And application conditions matter as much as product: paint applied to a surface too hot to touch skins over before the film forms properly, so the shaded side of the house is the right place to be working in the afternoon.

More on this: painting contractors and roofing contractors. See every listing under Hardware Stores.

Nearby: Nothing Bundt Cakes, Handel's Homemade Ice Cream, The Orange Peel.