Bathroom Paint. Is it worth it??

JonnyH649

Hi,

Me and the wife are looking to give our bathroom a new lick of paint to modernise it a little,

We were wondering if it is worth paying the extra for the bathroom specific paint which boasts anti-mould technology and is able to withstand steam and moisture.

can anybody confirm wether it is worth it or not or can we stick with a basic paint.

Thanks in advance.

Slinky

We've only ever used ordinary vinyl silk (Dulux) in our bathrooms and have never had problems. However we do have proper extraction above the showers, the house is well heated, and the bathroom windows are opened regularly to air the room. I can imagine it would be easy to get mould with poor ventilation in a colder house.

TheCyclingProgrammer

A normal eggshell paint will be just as good. If you ventilate the room properly you won't need to worry about mould.

ancientofdays

I used this in a well-ventilated shower room. Despite extensive and very careful preparation, the paint started to crack and flake. I hoped that this would make it easy to remove for repainting but it was awful to get off, and really hard to get the walls back into a decent condition for redecorating so I will never use it again.

SavingEnthu

Have just redone my bathroom ceiling.. had to scrape off quite a bit back to the plasterboard underneath... I then applied 2 coats of Zinsser 123 Bullseye primer....... and so far have only applied 1 coat of the Dulux Bathroom Pure Brilliant White Soft Sheen..

I guess it depends on how much you are comfortable spending and give yourself the best shot of hopefully doing the job well enough with good quality stuff and hopefully not having to revisit the job again cos of skimping on it the first time... (well, thats my view anyway)

Being a novice DIY'er without any significant experience, I just went with the specialist products out there and cross my fingers it holds up for a couple of years at least.

Good luck

ST1991

Depends how 'steamy' your bathroom gets. Ours is quite small and even with the window open it stays pretty steamy during the shower. We'll be putting an extractor fan into it in due course!

Bathroom paint isn't necessarily that much more than normal paint (we used wilkos own, and its great) for the walls. We did use a dulux anti-mould paint for the ceiling which was more expensive.
What i would say is that the anti-mould paints have specific instructions. Bleaching and preparing the surfaces first, hours between coats and allowing to dry for 24 hours before exposing to any steam or condensation. So how well they work depends on how well you apply them i guess!

Grenage

I've used Zinsser Permawhite silk before, and it was an excellent, hard-wearing paint. Most of the bathroom paints will give anti-mould guarantees for mould developing in the paint - but not on the paint.

In a room more prone to mould, I would pay the extra. Our new bathroom is much bigger, so I won't bother.

Horseygirl123

The builder next door used masonry paint that he was given. The bathroom is small and he said there are no problems.

Annie1960

I used Dulux bathroom paint in my last bathroom. It was painted in 2007 and I moved out 8 yeaars later and it still looked good.

I plan to use the same paint in my shower room and my current bathroom.

TheCyclingProgrammer

Grenage wrote: »

I've used Zinsser Permawhite silk before, and it was an excellent, hard-wearing paint. Most of the bathroom paints will give anti-mould guarantees for mould developing in the paint - but not on the paint.

In a room more prone to mould, I would pay the extra. Our new bathroom is much bigger, so I won't bother.

+1 to Zinsser Permawhite. We used it in a shower room which is ventilated but still gets some steam and condensation. Not a single spot of mould on the ceiling. Our local decorator place let us take it home to paint the ceiling then bring back the tin to have it tinted using a Dulux colour for the walls.

Niv

I used regular matt in my last bathroom, not a spot of mould after 11years of use!