Market Data

What the PPI for Paints and Allied Products Is, and Why It Sits at 422.95

A plain-English guide to the wholesale paint price index every coatings buyer should track, what it measures, and the feedstocks that move it.

The Producer Price Index for Paints and Allied Products reads 422.95 (1982=100) in the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, as of May 2026, meaning wholesale U.S. paint and coatings prices run about 4.2 times their 1982 level. The index is currently flat, little changed from a year ago. For anyone buying industrial coatings, architectural paint, or the primers and topcoats on a fabrication line, this is the number that tells you what the supply base is charging before distribution takes its cut.

What the index measures, and what it leaves out

The BLS collects the net selling prices U.S. paint and coatings producers receive each month, the Sherwin-Williams, PPG, and Benjamin Moore tier down through regional formulators, for a revenue-weighted basket spanning architectural paints, OEM and industrial coatings, and allied products like putties, sealers, and thinners. It is a factory-gate transaction price: rebates and discounts are in, but retail markup, contractor labor, and application costs are not. That is why the index can sit still while the paint aisle at retail keeps creeping, the gap between the two is the downstream channel repricing its own labor and margin, not the producers. For a procurement desk, the index is the right benchmark for negotiating with manufacturers and distributors, and the wrong one for estimating a painted-and-installed cost.

PPI: Paints & Allied Products, May 2026 (1982=100): 422.95. Ranged from 420.56 in Jun 2025 to 424.08 in Jan 2026 across the archived window; the latest reading sits at the 68th percentile of that range.

The feedstocks that move it

A can of paint is a chemistry set: pigment (titanium dioxide above all, the white base of nearly everything), resins and binders (acrylics and epoxies derived from petrochemicals), solvents (also petrochemical), and additives, in a metal or plastic container that has its own commodity story. Trace the tree back far enough and most branches end at crude oil, natural gas, and TiO2 ore processing. That is why this index tends to echo the industrial-chemicals and plastic-resins PPIs with a lag of a quarter or two: paint makers buy those markets as inputs, then push formula cost changes into list prices in discrete announcements rather than continuous drift. The lag and the lumpiness are the buyer's edge, upstream indexes usually tell you what a paint price letter will say before it arrives.

Upstream chemical indexes usually tell you what a paint price letter will say a quarter before it arrives.

Converting the index into decisions

The level converts to dollars directly: what $100 bought at wholesale in 1982 invoices at about $423 at today's 422.95 reading. But the working use is relative, not absolute. Benchmark your own coatings invoices against the index's year-over-year change, currently little changed from a year ago, and against its position in the archived range shown above. A supplier whose increases outrun the index owes you an explanation itemized in feedstock terms; a tape that is flat tells you whether time favors signing now or waiting a cycle. Either way, track the index monthly: paint is bought on habit more than any industrial input, and habit is what published data exists to correct.

Use the paint and coating cost calculator to turn coverage, film thickness, and current paint prices into cost per part. Cost your coating work

Published 2026-07-13.