Do Canadians think about paint in terms of gallons, or some other measurement?

October 14, 2009 12:17 AM

Is paint commonly sold in gallon containers in Canada? When Canadian people think about painting something, do they think about how many gallons they will need, or do they think of paint in terms of liters? (1. Tried googling, but I'm not doing it right. 2. I'm writing a word problem, if you must know.)
posted by 23skidoo to grab bag (16 comments total)

Most Canadians will buy paint by the gallon. Other construction stuff is similarly in US units - lumber sold in lumber yards is in the same standard sizes as the US (Imperial), houses and apartments are advertised in square feet, carpet and flooring tile are sold by the square foot. I think carpet stores would be confused if you wanted the square meter price. I think this is true even for younger Canadians - if you say you have a 850 sq ft 2BD apartment they will know immediately what the size is, but if you talk about it in square meters they'll be confused.
posted by thewalrus at 12:23 AM on October 14

By the gallon, or quart.

It's a mixed measurement system in general up here, some things are imperial, others are metric.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 12:38 AM on October 14

I buy paint in metric, but you can use imperial as you like. The only thing imperial for me is height and weight of people.
posted by juiceCake at 4:21 AM on October 14

Most tend to measure height in feet, too. Although cm is the standard for identification, etc.
posted by backwards guitar at 4:55 AM on October 14

Paint is generally sold by the gallon, but the can will have the metric equivalent written on it. Strangely enough, drinks are all sold by milliliters.
posted by Vindaloo at 6:09 AM on October 14

When I buy paint I do so 3.79 litres at a time. I think of painting jobs in terms of how many cans of paint I will need. So in a roundabout way I do think in gallons.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:43 AM on October 14

any portmanteau summarized it well: it is a gallon, but measured as metric. So I always think of it as how many cans I need. Stuff like Tropicana orange juice also come in imperial formats (1.89 litre), but I assume that they are in fact 2 litre, like milk box and others.
posted by ddaavviidd at 6:50 AM on October 14

I used to work for a major paint company and we treated Canada exactly the same as the US in terms of product. We shipped the exact same gallon cans and five gallon buckets up north as we did in the states. The cans probably did have the size in liters on the label too but the they were definitely gallon cans. The only difference for us was that we had to maintain a different set of safety sheets for the Canadian equivalent of OSHA.
posted by octothorpe at 6:59 AM on October 14

I usually refer to them as big can and little can, because I can never remember whether a gallon is bigger than a quart or vice versa. If I had to think about it, I would have guessed the bigger can to be 4 litres because it's about the size of a plastic milk jug.
posted by teg at 7:40 AM on October 14

I buy my paint by the gallon, although the label probably doesn't say it's a gallon.

The only metric measurement I've seen wholeheartedly embraced here in Canada is Celsius over Fahrenheit. I guess milk is sold by the litre, generally 1 or 2 litre cartons. Grocers are required to have metric measurements on their advertisements, but I see 5 and 10 lbs bags of potatoes advertised as such. I buy butter by the pound, but the label says 454 grams. In most grocery stores, you see the price on produce or meat is in $/lbs, but the $/kg is in tiny letters underneath. Certain American products like Mr. Clean or Javex come in the exact same sized jugs as in the US, but with strange metric measurements to two decimal places, rather than a nice round number.

For day-to-day functioning, I would say pounds and feet are embraced over kilograms and metres, except when government bureaucracy demands otherwise.

It's a freaking mess really, especially when you're in the grocery business. America was wise to stay with imperial, in my opinion.
posted by Brodiggitty at 7:48 AM on October 14

Paint by the gallon, height by the foot, area by the sqft and acre (although hectares when talking about forest fires) Drinks are by the milliliter, but they're direct conversions of the US equivalent -- pop (soda) is in 355 and 591 mL containers (12oz and 20oz). Butter and margarine come in 454g packages, ie 1lb. I have no idea what I weigh in kg, but it's on my drivers license.

As a 31 year old Canadian born and raised, these measurements seem perfectly normal, but looking back on them, the inconsistencies and just bizarre!
posted by cgg at 7:59 AM on October 14

The only metric measurement I've seen wholeheartedly embraced here in Canada is Celsius over Fahrenheit.

Kilometers and km/h too, I'd think. At least for road distances, but not necessarily for other things (ie, I'd swear I've heard a Canadian talking about driving 100km to get to a lake that was 2 miles wide).

Hopefully helpful answer: If you're writing a word problem for a book or other project that's intended to be eventually sold in Canada or in Canada as well as the US, then you should think that you're going to be dealing with a provincial government. So I'd stick with metric units, or measure paint in unitless cans.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:23 AM on October 14

For the most part everything in Canada is labeled in Metric but comes in the same portions it did decades ago. Meat is sold in packages of 454 grams, i.e. a pound. Paint comes in 3.79 litre can, i.e. a gallon. We usually sell milk in bags though, so you'll buy 4 litres of milk (in 3 1.33 litre bags) instead of a gallon. Cans are typically 8, 12 or 16 ounces but again labeled in ml.
posted by GuyZero at 9:41 AM on October 14

The funny thing is while we buy paint in gallon cans they aren't Canadian Gallon cans rather the undersized American gallons.
posted by Mitheral at 10:28 AM on October 14

We usually sell milk in bags though

If by "we" you mean Ontarians and not Canadians. Milk is not sold in bags in western Canada. We buy milk in 1, 2 and 4 litre cartons or plastic bottles.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 10:42 AM on October 14

To me, it's just a can of paint. I know it is a gallon, but I generally hear it referred to as a can.

The funny thing is while we buy paint in gallon cans they aren't Canadian Gallon cans rather the undersized American gallons.

Yeah, but no one uses imperial gallons. I've only once encountered them (my city has some old water system measuring devices that read in thousands of imperial gallons). Only if you come across something old enough to be pre-metric will you find anything measured in imperial gallons.
posted by ssg at 1:10 PM on October 14