The Roller Sleeve Challenge

For my entire painting career, I’ve never found a roller sleeve that I am truly happy with. Some shed too much lint, some make roller lines, and some fall apart after an hours use. I go through phases with them, for a long time I used the Pro Roller Company dripless sleeve. They are great in some respects but they can leave a ton of roller lines on the wall which gets annoying real fast. I switched to Purdy White Dove sleeves for a while then got annoyed and moved on to the Purdy Microfiber sleeves. I fell in love with them but it was too good to be true and switched yet again to the Sherwin Williams contractor sleeves. Surprisingly the Sherwin Williams sleeves are pretty good but they shed an awful amount of lint and seem to wear out rather quickly.

I’ve had enough of the constant search for a perfect roller sleeve and decided to end it once and for all. I’m calling it the roller sleeve challenge. I’ve gotten feedback from painting contractors throughout the country and made a list of the best 20 roller sleeves on the market. Some of them were difficult for me to locate like the E&J Microfiber sleeve which a paint store owner from Ohio was kind enough to send me for this test. The sleeves are going to be graded on a scale from 1-10 in seven categories, the sleeve that receives the highest amount of points will be the winner.

These are the categories for which they will be rated

1. Shed Resistance
2. Paint Pickup / Release
3. Durability
4. Ease of Use
5. Roller Lines
6. Splatter
7. Finish Quality

Here are the Sleeves Competing in the Challenge

1. Purdy White Dove
2. Purdy Marathon
3. Purdy Colossus
4. Purdy Microfiber
5. Purdy Golden Eagle
6. Purdy RoadRunner
7. Wooster MicroPlush
8. Wooster Polar Bear
9. Wooster Cirrus
10. Wooster Super Fab
11. Wooster Prodooz
12. Wooster 50/50
13. Wooster Avalon
14. Professional Gold Series Microfiber
15. Corona UltraWeave
16. Arroworthy Microfiber
17. ProRoller Co. Dripless
18. Consumer Microfiber
19. E&J Microfiber
20. Linzer Microfiber

I’m going to start testing them out next week, so check back for updates and to see how your favorite roller sleeve stacks up to the rest. Which sleeve do you think will come out on top?