Backdrop wants to shake up the paint game

Last year was the year of direct-to-consumer everything. Dishes, towels, beds, dutch ovens—you name it, and it was delivered. Paint was no exception.

Now another company is looking to ease the process of choosing the perfect color with a line of pick-and-ship paints that get delivered straight to your door.

Backdrop was started with the simple idea that painting should be easier. Founder Natalie Ebel wanted to get rid of all of the steps that make choosing and buying paint a painful process—the trekking to the hardware store, the rummaging through color chips, the messy sampling.

Backdrop

Instead, people can choose from 50 curated colors that have hashtag-able names like Tanlines (warm, deep yellow), Self Portrait (oxblood), Saturday On Sunday (blue-green), and Negroni (orange-red). The paints feel custom-designed for millennial taste—both color and lifestyle.

Backdrop

When you see a color you like, Backdrop sends a $2 12-by-12-inch removable swatch that adheres to the wall. Paint runs $45 a gallon.

Naturally, the company wants to be the one-stop digital shop for everything, so, like fellow direct-to-consumer paint brand Clare, you can pick up pretty much anything you need that’s painting related from their online shop, including rollers, brushes, paint pales, and drop cloths.

Are the supplies themselves a step up from what you’d find in your local ACE Hardware? Who knows. But Backdrop, like pretty much every other online lifestyle company, has been optimized for convenience and marketing glow so it’s easy to believe they are. At the very least, it means one less errand out of the apartment.