What Does It Mean To Box Your Paint And Why Should You Do It?

Imagine you've finished painting your house's exterior, only to find it charmingly resembles a dappled horse instead of the smooth, single-tone beauty you envisioned. Such a scenario hint at a disastrous game of paint roulette where the odds are seemingly against you. Your saving grace is a lesser-known practice called paint boxing. So, what does boxing the paint mean? In layman's terms, it's about as literal as 'boxing,' but instead of throwing punches, you're mixing cans. Boxing paint is an ingenious yet simple method of combining all your paint in one large container, ensuring minor color variations are so well blended they become unnoticeable. You might consider it the reality's equivalent of Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V but for painting — easy yet virtually foolproof. 

Aside from the sheer joy of not unintentionally creating an avant-garde mural on your wall, paint boxing offers other benefits. It can save you the anguish of clashing finishes birthed from different store-sourced or time-bought cans and the dread of last-minute sprints to the local hardware for a matching paint can. So, if you long for harmony and consistency while avoiding literal color madness, look no further than paint boxing. It could be the BFF your walls never knew they needed.

Even the most microscopic variation in tint from one container to the next could result in glaringly noticeable paint blotches on your vast, freshly painted wall. Paint boxing is your knight in shining armor in preventing such a scenario. However, its heroism tends to wane when dealing with smaller surfaces requiring only one paint can. Picture painting two reasonably small neighboring walls. In this case, using a different can of paint on each surface might adorn your room with slight variation. However, such disparity can easily be pardoned as a light or shadow effect rather than an epic paint fail.

Now the fun part: how to box paint. Gather all cans of similar color you've hoarded for your project, and empty them into a large bucket. Next, attach a squirrel mixer like the Homax Squirrel Paint and Texture Mixer on Amazon to a variable-speed drill, then whip everything up. In the swirling motion of the combo, all the minor discrepancies in color or texture magically disappear. Alternatively, you can box your paint on the move. Begin by painting from one can, and when it's half-empty, top it up with a similar amount from another container. Once that's finished, move on to the now-half-empty can second and refill it with paint from a fresh third can. Rinse and repeat until you've painted your way to an impressively consistent finish across your wall.

The first unrivaled benefit of boxing paint has to do with color consistency. Picture this: it's your home painting weekend, weather is favorable, yet after cracking open the third can of paint, you notice a subtle color difference on your wall. The horror! Boxing paint helps prevent those pesky shade variations. It truly shines when painting large areas that require multiple cans of paint, swooping in to eliminate any color discrepancy often synonymous with switching between cans mid-wall. Another charm of boxing paint sneaks in during future touch-ups. If you think finding the proper foundation for your skin type is challenging, have you tried matching aged paint colors? The leftover from your batch of boxed paint is like a fingerprint that only fits one wall, erasing those future mishaps like they never happened.

Boxing paint also aids in better storage. Combining those individual one-gallon cans into a singular five-gallon bucket is space-saving and a marvel of geometric efficiency. Gone are the days of fumbling through multiple cans in search of that one perfect color, only to discover it's not quite as perfect as you thought. With boxing paint, everything is perfectly blended and contained, making it an excellent space-saving solution that's easy on the eyes. Lastly, boxing paint is convenient. No more wasting valuable coins on extra cans only to find they aren't quite the right match or last-minute hardware store runs to match another paint can.