Company changes tone of buying paint
Backdrop ships out curated selection of colours directly to customer homes
Shopping for house paint has always been pretty standard. Go to a store, pick out a colour and watch the paint mixer shake it up.
It’s so easy that John Travolta can service the paint-buying public in Saturday Night Fever and manage to win one of Brooklyn’s hottest dance contests in his spare time.
But that might change thanks to a new direct-to-consumer paint company. Backdrop, launched last fall by husband-and-wife team Caleb and Natalie Ebel, offers 50 curated paint colours in two finishes (semi-matte and semi-gloss), which come in a strikingly modern rectangular paint canister.
One gallon (roughly four litres) of Backdrop’s paint will set you back US$45, about average in the industry. For US$2 you can order a 12-inch-by-12-inch adhesive sample to test out on your wall, and US$40 will get you an 11-piece essential starter kit.
Everything ships directly to your home, and a portion of all sales goes to The International Refugee Committee, which helps support displaced families in crisis.
“Our approach is one of simplicity and empowerment and serving the customer the way we wanted to be served as consumers. Instead of 350 whites, we have five whites,” Natalie tells Dwell.com.
Other colours include Surf Camp (dark blue), Tanlines (deep yellow), Modern Love (pale pink) and Sentimental Reasons (taupe grey).
The company collaborated with creative agency Aruliden for its sleek branding. Aruliden co-founder and CEO Rinat Aruh was happy to jettison the traditional can.
“It was an opportunity to do something fresh and different.”