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Oil based paint has been around for years and has been the best paint for woodwork. Whether you wanted to paint the woodwork inside your home or the external woodwork or metal work then oil based paint was the best choice. Oil based paint is known to be strong and durable, unlike it’s water based alternatives. It’s changed a lot over the years to become more environmentally friendly and in doing so it has lost some of it’s more popular aspects.
In recent times oil based paint has suffered, because of the high voc’s (volatile organic compounds). Voc’s are air pollutants that can affect people, animals and the environment. The European Union has set a limit for Voc’s levels in paint and because the levels were high in oil based paint something had to change.
As a result of this new regulation the old oil based paint was changed ever so slightly in order to lower the voc levels. This change caused problems with pretty much all oil based paint.
The problem with this altered oil based paint was that instead of staying white it was yellowing in a matter of months.
This gave rise to new and improved water based alternatives. Unlike oil based paint, water based paint dries a lot faster, can be re coated the same day, is friendlier to the environment and tends to keep its colour. It’s not all good though, water based paint generally needs more coats, isn’t as durable and can be problematic when applied over oil based paint.
Waterbased paint will also need a good stain block when painting over marks and stains (usually an oil based stain block).
Which paint should you use for your woodwork? There are lots of good reasons to use water based paint but in my experience you should let the surface you want to paint dictate what type of paint to use.
