Brush up on your painting skills at affordable prices
PAINT is a relatively cheap ingredient litre-per-litre, considering its enormous impact and range over our walls, wood, and even surfaces such as tile and MDF. Let’s look at what’s on the shelves this weekend.
A scrub-clean silk finish and, the holy of holies, the matt you can wipe, remain our paint favourites for walls. American company Valspar has made a colourful appearance at B&Q, with a range of more than 2,000 pre-set shades on offer.
Its colour-matching technology, done right at the counter with anything bigger that 1cm² is impressive. Find a colour to suit from a scrap of fabric, or say paper, with 99.01% accuracy.
Valspar’s best product is its Premium Paint & Primer. Pricey at €21 a litre (€51.60 for 2.5ltrs), however it’s ideal for raw new walls with dense coverage at 10m² per litre in a matt, mid-sheen and silk finishes. The standard emulsion in all their colours is €15.20 per litre in matt and silk only.
Dulux Easycare is a tough match for a wall-mauling household and the company has introduced even higher stain resistance. €14.40 per litre (for 2.5ltrs). Coverage is impressive at 14m² per litre but, as with most wall paints, two coats is standard.
The mid-range wall and ceiling range of Dulux Vinyl does not boast the toughness of Easycare but has good opacity at a lesser price if the kids have moved away, at €9.60 per litre in matt and silk.
Crown Paints’ signature product is its much-lauded, low-odour Breatheasy emulsion at €9.19 per litre. Even if you cannot smell a paint after application, I would encourage anyone to choose the lowest VOC possible (99% VOC free at least) and air the room for several days before occupancy.
Breatheasy can be scrubbed down, is tough against impacts and stain-resistant.
If you can find a colour to suit, Crown Breatheasy Solo could save you half the work, with full coverage in one coat. Woodies has Solo on offer in a mid-sheen for €41.50 for 5ltrs in 13 classic colour choices. B&Q Colours Premium/Any Room, is suited to any surface (wood or walls) and is €11.08 per litre if you buy 5ltrs. Right away you can see you’re paying for these extra conveniences in application. Standard B&Q emulsion in this Colours range is just €6.12 a litre.
Formerly termed as ‘oil’ paint, a lot of VOC heavy solvent has been removed from the mix, making these products not only easier on the lungs but more fluid and less frustrating to use. Choose acrylic and water based, quick-drying products where possible in place of any oil base.
A high-shine, oil-based white gloss is not what it was before EU legislation in 2010 and is vulnerable to yellowing.
Valspar Premium Wood & Metal is €25 per litre, with the same coverage in Eggshell, Satin and Gloss. For other traditional oil- style paint try Little Greene’s Traditional Oil Eggshell at €99 for 5ltrs and Oil Gloss at €59.50 for 2.5ltrs (both from Hickeys of Maylor St, Cork). These paints use vegetable oils in place of toxic solvents.
The term eggshell and satin means less lustre than gloss. For a matt finish on wood, Farrow & Ball do what the company terms a Dead Flat, lovely but less durable to abuse, at €72.50 for 2.5ltrs. All Farrow & Ball metal and wood finishes are solely water and acrylic-based.
My favourite is an Irish product — Colortrend Historic Antique Eggshell at €31.99 per litre. Buy online at www.Colortrend.ie
Speciality paint performs on surfaces others cannot touch. For kitchens and bathrooms, the inclusion of moisture and mould resistance is crucial, pushing up the cost of standard vinyl products to €9.50 per litre or more. Don’t skimp or the walls and plaster beneath will suffer over time.
Dulux Light & Space contains light- reflective ingredients that can return up to 50% more light than a typical pale emulsion, making it well worth €10.60 per litre.
Rustoleum Mode is a range of spray paint that leaves a tough, enamel-style factory finish on MDF, metal and melamine. This exciting up-do in a high gloss comes in at €17.40 for 400ml, and depends on perfect priming.
Ronseal’s One Coat Tile & Cupboard is a great choice for re-inventing kitchen doors which are in good structural shape but crying out for modern colour styling. €28 for a 750ml tin.
With rich naturally-derived clays and pigments, a high acrylic content and eco-friendly credentials you can all but double the price per litre for a tin of up-market emulsion (€18-€22). Rich coverage of 14m² per litre, these paints can earn their price tag, so don’t choose simply for social credentials or based on a single colour.
There might be a patent on fanciful names but there’s no patent on a shade. Reasonable contenders such as our own Fleetwood has some fabulous colour choices, low in VOCs in traditional classics including a gorgeous Elite Grey and gallery red Smithsonian (€44.99 for 5ltrs of a base colour and €10 to tint).
Where boutique brands do lick the competition is for historic finishes such as lime wash and distemper. Distemper is a powdering wall covering with natural resins beloved in historic houses as it allows ancient walls to ‘breathe’.
Farrow & Ball, and Earthborn (made in Ireland and available at the Stoneware Studios, Piltown, www.stonewarestudios.com ) offer both. If you want a truly flat matt, try Little Greene Absolute Matt but don’t expect to grind off that ketchup spatter. €11 per litre.
Paint firms offer what are termed everyday colours (that is the most popular whites, off-whites and creams largely) in a reasonably low-price group of limited colour choices. Economical favourites include Crown Expressions which comes in at €3.50 per litre if you buy a 10ltr pot.
Once we start saving, going very cheap (I found white emulsion for as little as €1.59 per litre), coverage can suffer.
However, where budget paints do make good sense is for freshening like-with-like. Dulux Magic White goes on pink and dries white, ideal for navigating when refreshing a wall. €22.75 for 5ltrs.
For colours, the best result with a less expensive paint will be by using a good undercoat colour to enrich the top colour and sticking to as close as what’s on the wall — pale over pale or dark over dark.
If you put cheap watery products on bare plaster, the moisture in the paint will be pulled in, leaving a patchy, maddening mess.
Ensure raw plaster is dry and properly prepared for decoration.
* Prices in litres of all paints given based on purchase of 5-10ltrs at time of going to press.
* Getting a colour or finish wrong is a deeply frustrating moment, especially if you’ve rolled out one wall and paid up to €25 a litre for the privilege. Ensure you test your colour and texture carefully.
* Always buy tester pots, and buy two if the quantities are tiny (100ml is a tablespoon). PC renditions of colour cannot be trusted. Valspar tester pots offer a whopping 236ml for just €3.50.
* Prime raw plaster first or use lining paper.
* Allow paint to fully dry before flooring the accelerator down to the DIY store. Acrylic and even water-based emulsion paint can take a couple of hours to properly cure on the wall.
* Paint large. A better swathe of paint will allow you to not only stand back and really see its impact, but to bring furniture in close and check for match. Where you don’t want to take it to the wall, use lining paper.
* Consider aspect and the variety of lighting that will fall on the walls. Draw the curtains well back during the day and paint on both a shadowed and bright wall. Turn on the principal lights in the evening. Any sheen will appear more obvious in non-directional light. If you only use the room at particular times of the day — that counts.
* To check if a primer is needed on an already painted surface, press a piece of transparent tape onto old paint and remove — if the paint comes off it needs priming.
* If you are intending to use more than one colour, test the colours in situ together over different times of the day. Note if anything seems over- whelming or just ‘off’. Would reversing the equation of darker walls, paler woodwork be interesting?
* Buy from the same batch, especially if you’re using natural paints that may alter in minute amounts delivering slight change in colour. Tins should have a batch code.
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