Should I Use Oil or Water Based Paints?
Hi there
David here from the Decorators Blog
Should I Use Oil or Water Based Paints?
This is a very common question i get asked whenever i,m decorating, and theres a couple of things that are important when addressing this issue.
First of all, where do you live (and i mean “in the world”) this is a worldwide blog, even though i live in Northern England, so you need to sort that issue out depending on the climate where you live.
Ok, where i live we get warm mild summers and damp winters, therefore using water based paints in the winter when the temperature is damp/cold is not really a good idea, the water based paint will simply never dry, unless you are working inside with a good source of heating available.
Likewise in the summer time, if your trying to get oil based paints to dry quickly, you can add driers but its not really a good idea when the paint can dry naturally in the heat.
Oil or Water Based Primer/Undercoat
Which is Best ?
The 2nd issue is how quickly do you need to get the job done, Obviously water based paints will dry much quicker in the summer time, but will struggle when temperatures drop, whenever i,ve had small jobs to do, then water based undercoats are a god send to a decorator, you can go from bare wood to the finished article in a matter of a few hours, and thats applying 2-3-4 coats.
Now talking about water based undercoats is just one area of the water versus oil paints debate, there are gloss, satin, emulsion and satin/eggshell based paints too, and these all have their own advantages and disadvantages, and we,ll talk about them later on in different blogs.
So lets quickly start at the beginning, if i wanted bare wood to dry quickly and the temperature was decent (not freezing) then water based primers i would always use, if the temp was freezing then i would have to use oil based with driers added,
(Terebene Driers are a compound/mixture that can be added to oil based paints to speed up the drying process – especially worth having if you must paint outside, or even inside in freezing conditions)
Moving up to the undercoat stage, it would depend on how big and how quickly the final coat had to be added, Larger jobs usually will use oil based undercoats as the next day it is recoatable, however many jobs inside where people are in the houses when the decorator is there insist on water based paints for the drying time and the fact that the odour is less noticeable.
For many people who decorate the odd room every now and again, i would personally use water based primers and undercoats, these are easy to use, store and have a decent shelf life if stored correctly, and are recoatable in a very short time,
the exception to this would be winter time, when unless the painting had to be done, i would simply leave until better weather came along.
I hope that has helped you understand the difference when using oil or water based paints and when to use them, we’ll talk about the other types of paints in later blogs.
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Take care
David
P.S
Any questions , please dont hesitate to ask
