Ralph Lauren River Rock Paint Notes
The Fix Chicks have received lots of mail about Ralph Lauren River Rock paint. In fact, that’s the ONLY Ralph Lauren paint we get email about, even though we feature a room done using their Suede textured paint. See the original article and additional comments here.
We’d like to thank Eric, who wrote in about a River Rock paint application solution that he and his wife, Erin, came up with.
Dear Fix Chicks:
My wife and I found your website after we destroyed our kitchen walls with Ralph Lauren River Rock, we had roller marks all over. Feeling confident with your hints I went over the walls again, still with no luck of having a finish we could both live with. So as a last resort we purchased a Wagner Power Painter and went over the walls yet again touching up the walls we were unhappy with. A third coat turned out great. The living room was next, we were kind of shy about doing the living room, but having invested in 3 gallons of Sandstone we hated not to use it. After the Power Painters’ second coat our living room looks great.
How we did it is we took workable sections and sprayed from left to right trying to coat the wall evenly without streaking and blending the next section. Try to maintain the same distance as you go. It still looked kind of streaky so the second coat we went from top to bottom, bottom to top to blend in the streaks. The first coat was dry by the time I was ready to start the second coat. Both coats took about 3 hours, but the prep time of masking off the room took about 2 hours. Take your time masking off the room and drop cloth the entire room; the paint and sand fleck will be everywhere. For safety wear a painting mask with plenty of ventilation. The living room was a breeze compared to the kitchen and worth the purchase of the paint.
Thanks for sharing Eric! Your shiny, happy Fix Chicks mug is on the way!
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Статья вроде старая уже, но я только сегодня ее прочитал. Занимательно, что тут скажешь.
Well, I wished I would have checked here first as well. Just finished my second coat of Frosted Hawthorne RR paint and it still looks blotchy. I could live with blotchy if it was a little more consistent. I have used the suede paint with NO problems whatsoever… I am not sure what my problem with RR is. I am going to try a third coat using a four inch brush. Wish me luck!
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I have a found a way that works great. Roll the 18″ sections from top to bottom. Be sure your roller is well loaded with paint. Once you get done with your first column, run the roller from top to bottom (or bottom to top) on the new section. Don’t redip the roller for this, use very light pressure. It worked great for me. Work across the wall. Be sure when you run your roller at the end, that you overlap where you did it before. Good luck.
Hello,
I have recently used River Rock paint in Pyrite. I rolled on two coats of this product using RL’s instructions, with the resulting roller marks. I took a hint from Eric’s posting about spraying this product.I am an experienced painter who has used a number of RL canned finishes. Ralph Lauren will never tell you to spray their products. I have sprayed the Regent Metallics paints, although time-consuming, and they have turned out beautifully. Spraying River Rock with my HVLP sprayer was not easy, as the product clogs the gun easily. After some experimenting, I settled on about 35-40% dilution with water and some Floetrol. Once the sprayer works, do not stop!! Good luck!
I did the river rock in two coats over white walls.
I cannot recommend the flotrol enough. IT WORKS. Use at least half the bottle per gallon. The paint stays wetter, longer. NO PAINT LINES!!!
First, tape around everything.
Use a paint pad to apply. Pretend you are spreading frosting on a cake you made. LOAD your paint pad, and then start from top to bottom, working quickly, spreading your “frosting” over the wall in a figure eight pattern, some of them sideways, some of them fanned out. Think of this paint as liquid spackle for your walls
You will have to reload the brush frequently.
Don’t worry about getting the corners perfectly, that’s why God made paint brushes.
Work ONE WALL AT A TIME. I mean, if you are going to paint a wall, don’t stop until it’s done. I had to on one of my walls with no adverse affects because of the technique I used. But you “get your rhythm” going, and get a feel for the paint.
Wait for it to dry just a few hours. That second coat will have to go on thicker than the first coat.
Make sure your light is good. VIOLA. Thanks for everyone who made it possible to do my walls. i don’t regret it one bit.
So there is no way to fix the roller marks except to repaint the entire wall! There are only a few spot the rest of the walls are perfect and I am afraid if we repaint the entire wall then we might have more roller marks! We only painted 3 walls of the room and used every drop of 2 gallons should we try a thrid?
I applied Coastal Sand River Rock and it turned out great. After the first coat I had roller marks everywhere and the flecks would be greater on one roll than another highlighting the roller patterns. I wasn’t sure if the second done per the instructions would handle this or just lay down a new coat looking like the first. I checked the web and saw the comments about problems with how it looked. I ran across some that said to do the cross-hatching brush strokes instead, like on the suede method.
I did this and I am really happy with how it turned out. It has a suede pattern to it with the base color highlighted by the flecks in a random subdued pattern. It’s probably not the intended look but I think it’s as good if not better.
Couple of things I learned doing this. Forget the instructions and special rollers. You may even be able to get the look I got in one coat, there were some areas I brushed on the first coat due to do the small space and they looked fine and did not need a second coat. If you do two coats the first can be put on with a regular roller and brush. How it looks doesn’t really matter as the second coat cover it up or blend in with the first.
When it goes on it looks like a solid color as it dries then the flecks start showing up. This makes it hard to see how the pattern will be when you are rolling and why I think the short x-hatching works better than the rolling.
I didn’t have to worry about a wet edge. Just do the random x’hatching over the previously painted part. The brushing gets to be pretty tedious and tiring after a while. I think partly to the thickness of the paint with the particles in it.
I previously painted my living room and dining room in a river rock shade called stormy peak. This shade has been discontinued. Seven years later I am getting ready to move and have to repaint the high traffic areas. I am now using a similar shade called Chalk. My original paint job looks perfect. There aren’t any lines or streaks including the areas where I cut close to the ceiling. I remember when I first started painting I used a “regular” roller and was having so much trouble I went back to Home Depot and purchased the recommended roller for this paint. At that time it was a dark gray roller. It wasn’t soft or super absorbent. It seemed to be some sort of plastic and very porous. It alleviated my problems of applying an even coat of paint. I knew this time I had to buy the recommended roller to avoid a repeat of earlier troubles. To my surprise, Ralph no longer makes the dark gray rollers but have a new roller that is much like a conventional paint roller. I notice from a post by Brett in March he mentioned he noticed the roller had changed as well. The new roller does not work. I am searching to find the original roller. It did not seem to hold the sand and cause the uneven distribution. I am thinking of touching up spots with a similar shade instead of repainting the entire walls. If you can get this paint on evenly, it looks wonderful and I get so many compliments on it. I’m in search of a roller! Any suggestions on where to find the original?
If you like painting with the Ralph Lauren paint, you better hurry to get some. Home Depot is replacing its Ralph Lauren line of interior paint with an all-new Martha Stewart interior and exterior paint in March 2010.
Great Post!
Thanks for all your pointers. We are painting our powder room and have already put 2 coats on it with rollar marks as the end result. Short of my husband sanding all 4 walls and starting fresh we are looking for pointers. Off to Home Depot for another gallon and hopefully it will work the 3rd time. So it appears that using a x-hatching pattern is best, should we try the flotrol?
Liked the River Rock paint display color of coastal sand, bought it, painted the wall using their recommended technique, let it dry, did the second coat as they recommended, let it dry, don’t like it, can see the roller marks,looks like a road map, consulted Home Depot, bought more paint, did it again, still don’t like it, went back to home depot, bought more paint, did it again, still very unhappy with it. Used 4 gallons on 3 walls, total cost about $200 and it looks worse than the wallpaper hat was removed. Don’t buy river rock by Ralph Lauren.
We did the regent metallic on the 4th wall and it looks great, 2 coats and done.
Well, I too wish I had read this site first. Two coats of Chalk on the walls and roller marks everywhere.
I’m wondering whether to just cover it all with a suede paint. Does anyone know if that would work?
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I’ve done accent wall painting in RL River Rock in dark colors (Cavern Clay, Clay Brown, Grand Teton and Aviator Green). I did it just like Ralph says and every wall looks great - no roller marks. Use plenty of paint and 2 (sometimes 3) coats.
used river rock with ralph lauren rollers and with normal rollers,paint was both dark blue, and off white. no problems. kept the roller heavy with paint. i live in the pacific nw with lots of rain in the atmosphere. maybe that helps.
I have two different shades of RL River rock in my house, Coastal Sand (light colour), and Cavern Clay (dark colour). Both look really good, but the dark one is flawless. The little grey specks in the paint are what show up in a roller mark, so if they are lighter than the colour of the paint they’re more or less invisible, making roller marks harder to see.
My big problem with the paint is that I think it’s pretty much always going to be that texture, but if I want to re-paint I can’t because the Home Depot decided they would rather sell the paint of an ex-con.
So we just bought a house that has river rock paint throughout. We removed the “popcorn” ceiling and have created a HUGE mess on the walls. We’re thinking of just spraying a light coat since the old owners left us the paint. Anyone have any other ideas of how to clean the walls or is spraying a coat the only way? Thanks!
We did a Ralph Lauran paint 6 years ago. It was a hard road to go down but it looked great when we were done. We are now in the process of remodeling and want to know how to paintover the river rock. Over the years, being in the kitchen, we were unable to clean any food stains or kids finger prints off the walls… any Suggestions?????
We used the RL river rock coastal sand for our new nursery. So far we are just frustrated. The first coat was awful, the second coat was an improvement but still pretty bad. We then did a third coat, which I was confident would fix all of the problems… it did not. I have enough paint left for a forth coat and plan on trying that tonight… we will see. I went to home depot and will be using the roller they rocommended. It this doesn’t work I may cry.
ok, so we did it again last night… First the guy at home depot said we would have better luck if we bought a 4″ paint brush and did X marks after painting. We tried this on one wall and it did not come out right. Then, we tried keeping the RL roller very wet and doing even strokes. Each time you re-wet your roller you have to go back over the previous section a little to blend it. By the time we were done it looked great. 5-coats, 4- half walls, 3-rollers and 2-buckets of paint and 1-paintbrush later and we are done. It looks beautiful now. I wish I had read the feedback on this site earlier and saved myself a lot of trouble!
Great ideas.
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I had the same problem of streaking. We ended up sponging a third coat on, which created a nice hammered metal effect, and no lines.
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I’d love to see pictures of some of the results from you guys. I don’t like painting at all but I need to paint my son’s room and he’d love this paint in his room
This paint is lousy. There is no reason that a well prepped wall should require in excess of two coats, especially considering the paint now costs 55 dollars a gallon! I have used the river rock frosted hawthorn on about 4000 sq feet of wall space and I can tell you that the posts here are mostly correct. The moral of the story is that whatever your technique, you will need LOTS of paint and at least three coats of it. A little aside, once up it looks great, but don’t get it dirty, it’s impossible to clean.
I’ve blown through about twenty gallons of this horrible paint since I started using it. Problem is, it’s like waiting in line, once you start you feel committed and the deeper in you get the more committed you become. Break the cycle people, don’t use River Rock. It’s a scam to get you to buy more paint. Ralph Lauren is laughing all the way to the bank as the poor suckers (like me) go back again and again to cover up layer after layer of streaky, uneven, splotchy walls. Oh, and if you ever want to touch-up, HA, HA, HA, you’ll be doing the whole thing again!
Thanks for all the great information on RL RR paint. I’m so sad Home Depot no longer carries RL, and the Martha Stewart paint is horrible, her colors are ok though. I call her “4 coat Martha.” I just get her colors in Behr Ultra now. I really miss RL, where can I find it now?
Also, has anyone used the River Rock paint on brick? I am thinking of applying it with a pad or sponge but have never used RR before so not sure if it would look good or not.
One think helps a lot specialy if you are painting dark colors over light color.paint the walls with regular flat paint color should be same or close to your river rock paint best if you applied 2 coats for dark colors (benjamin moore super hide) it still be cheper then buying another gallon of river rock.the reson of seeing roller marks is that this is not a regular paint so it dosent cover that well.also dont forget to stir your river rock paint trogouhly before and during the proces of painting because the sand that is in the paint will set on the battom of the can and you wont be eable to get even texture on the walls.allways use the rollers made for this paint (ralph raulen river rock) use small roller to cut in the corners and remeber to keep wet edge at all time.good lock
Ive used River Rock in more than one home. I found I turns out fine with 2 coats, then use a sponge roller to even out any roller marks.
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I am not kidding when I say that I have used 6 gallons(so far) to paint a 9′ x 16′ wall with the RR. The result……TERRIBLE! I think I will try a 7th gallon with some Floetrol mixed in. I wouldn’t be as upset if the damn paint wasn’t $50 a gallon. Wish me luck!
PS…..avoid Ralph Lauren River Rock at all costs!!!
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