Knowing what paint to use on your walls

It became apparent to me recently, that people I meet in business and personally have such a broad range of skills and knowledge. What might be simple and easy for one person is complex and confusing to another.

This has prompted me to start a blog. A place to write about the things I have learnt in my industry, and the experiences I have within it. So, let’s kick things off and talk about paint. I’ve written two blogs about this to separate information about woodwork and walls. This blog is about wall paint or otherwise known as emulsion, which you can’t use on woodwork, just on plaster, based walls inside your home.

I hope to help people make better paint purchases and to demystify the hundreds of brands out there selling different types of paint. So what types of paints are there? Let’s start with buying paint for your home, what paint goes where, why I recommend it, what its made of and is it worth buying more expensive brands.

First of all, let me just say. Painting is a ball ache! No one wants to empty a whole room of their belongings and have to relocate it into another room for a week or two. Then there’s sheeting up, the dust, the paint splats and the TIME it takes to do it. So do it once, do it well, and kick back for another 3-5 years after knowing you haven’t got to do it again.

Investing in a decent brand of paint is the difference between your new paint schemes standing the test of time, or it looking good for a week or two, then scuff marks reappearing.

Second of all, buy decent paint and don’t buy from retail shops. Shops such as B&Q, Homebase, Wilkos, and Screwfix etc. all sale retail paint. This is just a thinned out version of the trade paints available to trades people. It’s thinned out to make the coverage worse so you have to give it more coats and therefor buy more paint. I know this because I worked at Dulux, and the guy who trained us on the different types of paint told us this himself. Don’t buy retail, always buy trade!