So you painted your walls with flat paint because that’s what your dad always did and now you hate it because that cute little dog of yours keeps making marks all over it, right? Good thing there’s a solution for you!

Behr interior semi-gloss paint

Go to your local home depot and grab a bucket of the shine level you want but make sure you get the can labeled “Deep Base.” The deep base paind is usually only for really dark or rich colors that they have to mix for you. Fortunately the deep base is also usefull for covering your lower shine level paint. When you open a deep base paint without ant colorants in it, it will look like milky water but will dry clear! So just roll the clear deep base paint over your existing paint and get the durability of a higher shine paint.

Do not do this the other way around…  only put a higher gloss finish over a lower gloss finish paint. Why? because the higher shine a paint has the more enamel content it has. This is what makes the higher shine paints more durable, but also makes it more difficult for other coats of paint to stick to it. Enamel can stick to other enamel and to the more porous flat paints, but flat paints will simply flake off of gloss finishes.

*Almost forgot – I’ve only tried this with BEHR paint, so I don’t know if other paint brands will truly dry compleatly clear.