Is it necessary to signal to customers that they are clearly getting a bargain because the Walmart is so cheap that it buys (presumably) off color, icky paint so they can pass the savings off to customers? That’s a branding issue rather than a cost issue, since Walmart buys in such ginormous volumes and bargains so hard that they’d get the finest prices on whatever they purchased, including paint.

I've thought this myself - I live next door to a Walmart and I shop there more then I otherwise would as a consequence. Walmart is unnecessarily ugly. Why? Is it focus groups? Is it that the poor are conditioned to think that ugly things are appropriate for them?