Wood stains, a father and a son.

Behr began in 1947 in the Pasadena garage of Otho Behr Jr., the Los Angeles Times reported in September 1999. He later teamed up with his father, Otho Behr Sr., and in the early 1950s the business moved south to Santa Ana, in Orange County, where it is still based. In 1999 the newspaper described it as a family-owned company and called it Behr Process Corp.

English Wikipedia fills in the early story. It says Otho Behr Jr. started out selling linseed-oil wood stains to paint stores from the back of his station wagon, and that he asked his father, a chemist, to develop a formula for a redwood stain. As the business grew, Wikipedia says, it moved in 1948 into a Quonset hut in Pasadena — the prefabricated, half-cylinder metal building familiar from the war years — before outgrowing that too and settling in Santa Ana.

Wood care has stayed part of the business. Wikipedia today describes the company, under the name Behr Paint Company, as a supplier of architectural paint and exterior wood-care products to do-it-yourself customers in the United States and Canada: interior and exterior house paints, decorative finishes, primers, stains and surface-preparation products. The name is styled in capitals, BEHR, on the company’s own website and packaging, and Wikipedia records the same styling.

Santa Ana has given the company its home for most of its history. When the Los Angeles Times reported the 1999 sale, it noted that Behr would keep its headquarters there.

Exclusively at The Home Depot.

Behr’s story is tied to one retailer. The Los Angeles Times reported in 1999 that Behr had supplied The Home Depot since the chain opened in 1978, and that it had grown alongside the Atlanta-based retailer over the following two decades. Wikipedia describes Behr’s products as sold exclusively at The Home Depot, and the company’s own website said in 2019, in so many words, “BEHR is available exclusively at The Home Depot.”

Colour matching has been part of that relationship for decades. Wikipedia says that in 1988 Behr offered computer colour matching at The Home Depot, letting customers bring in a piece of fabric or another colour sample to be scanned and turned into a paint formula. Wikipedia also notes that Behr gives each of its colours a creative name, meant to help customers remember a shade later — the naming that turns a numbered chip into something a customer can ask for by name.

Its website has become a colour tool as much as a catalogue. An archived version from 2019 offered ColorSmart by BEHR, for finding and coordinating colours; Paint Your Place, a visualiser that let customers upload a photograph of their own room and preview colours on it; a “Pins to Palettes” tool that built a palette from a customer’s Pinterest boards; and a seasonal colour-trends palette, then labelled 2019. The same page offered country versions for the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile and China, and Wikipedia cites a separate Mexican website for the brand.

Paint, colour and ownership.

The paint brands in this group sit at very different points in the trade. Some are long-established manufacturers whose names have passed through several owners, and whose cans are sold through hardware chains, dedicated stores and trade counters; others are younger companies that sell mainly online or from a handful of showrooms, often built around a short, edited list of colours rather than a vast library.

A paint brand’s identity is carried by more than a logo. It lives in the can and its label, in the fan deck and the swatch card, in the names given to colours, in the store or website where people choose them, and in programmes that pick out a colour for the year. Because the company behind a name may have been sold, merged or closed, and because paint can be made far from where it is marketed, the plain questions are worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where the paint is actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

BEHR in capitals.

Behr did not stay a family business. On 2 September 1999 the Los Angeles Times reported that Masco Corporation, the Michigan-based maker of kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures, had acquired Behr as one of five Home Depot suppliers it bought that day. The paper reported that Behr would keep its name, headquarters, management team and employees, and quoted its chief executive, Ron Lazof, saying that Masco “will permit us to maintain our own culture and independence.” English Wikipedia’s article on Masco describes the purchase as the company’s entry into architectural coatings.

The 1999 report also gives a picture of the two companies at the time of the deal. It described Behr as a manufacturer of paints, stains and varnishes, with its headquarters in Santa Ana, and the Michigan company Masco as a maker of household products including KraftMaid cabinets, Baldwin hardware and Delta faucets. It quoted Lazof calling it “a wonderful, wonderful opportunity” for Behr’s employees, customers and suppliers. Masco itself has since changed leadership: Wikipedia records that Jonathon Nudi, a former General Mills executive, succeeded Keith Allman as Masco’s chief executive with effect from 7 July 2025.

Masco has owned Behr since 1999. Wikipedia lists Behr Paint Company among Masco’s decorative architectural products, alongside the primer brand KILZ and Liberty Hardware, separate from Masco’s plumbing brands.

The brand’s visual identity is built around its name and colour. The name is set in capitals; the company’s tools speak of colour discovery and coordination; and its colours carry names rather than only numbers. The palette here — a redwood brown, a cream and a bright orange — is our own interpretation, a nod to the redwood stain the business began with.

For a design guide, Behr shows how a paint brand can live almost entirely inside another company’s store. Compare The Home Depot, the retailer that sells it, and Dunn-Edwards, another Southern California paint maker. For this guide we use a redwood brown, a cream and an orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Behr’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.