What Type Of Paint Is Best For A Bathroom: A Complete Guide

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Do you know what type of paint is best for a bathroom? We are here to provide you with the best paints and related info if you don’t. Let’s dive into the deep.

Keeping a home sound and disturbance-free is a house owner’s top priority. When it is your bathroom, it demands the top-notch attention of a house owner. Indeed, the bathroom is a house’s most vulnerable part due to its watery environment. So, every house owner should know the proper management of the bathroom and painting as its significant part. 

What Type Of Paint Is Best For A Bathroom

Among the overcrowded market of paints, glossy and satin paints have the best usage for bathrooms. You can prioritize the higher glossy, glossy, semi-glossy, and satin paints according to their usability for bathroom walls.

Keep faith in us; we will show you the right path where to go. We will reveal all bathroom painting aspects from our real-life experience and more about what you need to paint your bathroom.

Important facts to know before choosing a paint

You will find a lot of paint in nearby shops. You can use them for almost any painting purpose. But when it comes to bathroom paint, you can’t use a randomly selected one. So, it’s important to know the paints as well as some relevant catalysts.

Before knowing about paints, if you don’t have some painting know-how, you won’t get the best paint and ultimately the best result. Let’s get you introduced to the basic principles of paints first.

Glaze and durability

The current paint market offers a lot of paints. The variation comes to fulfill various purposes. If you use them for the wrong purpose, this will lead to poor results. So, it’s far better to understand which paints will be durable for your bathroom.

There is a common theory of paint – the more glazing a paint, the more durable it is. When you want to choose durable paint, ensure that it is glossy.

Moisture and steam

The hot shower and other usages of hot water, cause serious effects on the bathroom wall. Hot water creates steam and increases moisture levels. Also, sometimes you might find some dirty texture, peeling, bubbles, etc., on the wall. These effects are because of the increased moisture level that happened by the emergence of steam.

Characteristics of water and oil-based paints

Water-based paints are suitable for the walls. You can easily use them for coloring your walls, ceiling,  or any interior parts of the house. You might find these paints by another name – latex paints. Besides the above-mentioned places, this paint will not bring a satisfactory result.

Oil-based paints are not suitable for wall painting. They are less durable and obstructive considering the wall-damaging aspects. They are highly suitable for door, metal, wood, and skirting boards.

Dampness

Compared to other places, the bathroom faces more water and remains damp almost always. If this dampness continues, your bathroom walls will get damaged promptly. So, they need to use paints that can resist dampness more than other paints. It means you need to use a particular paint that is particular for prevent dampness.

Manufacturing purposes of paints

Some manufacturers make some paints for special purposes. Suppose a paint is perfect for ceiling or outdoor walls, it will not be fruitful for other places due to its manufacturing particularity. So, you have to understand the specializations and their usage.

Easy cleaning

Bathroom walls tend to allow stains and mildew. You need to wipe them at regular intervals. If the paint is easy to clean and doesn’t get washed away during cleaning, it will ease your task. Because washable paints help to remove mold and mildew and remain undamaged after washing.

Waterproof

Bathroom problems start when water enters the walls and allows a reaction. If you apply waterproof paint on your wall, it will lead you to enjoy several years worry-free. Besides, it reduces your bathroom cleaning task.

Introduction to the paint types

Let’s get introduced to some paints and their usage nature. We have chosen the paints after a lot of experiments and from real-life users’ experiences.

Beyond the above paints, manufacturers produce some more paint depending on quality. They are retail paint and trade paint. While the retail paints represent a lower standard; the trade paint indicates superior paints.

Retail paint

Retail paints are lower grade than trade paints. You can use them for normal purposes and to save money. However, these types of paints fail to deal well with bathroom painting purposes. Also, when you have a low budget for painting, you can select this. It is easily affordable and you can use it for more than one coat of paint. 

Trade paint

Trade paints are more durable and effective for bathrooms indeed for other purposes too. They are more expensive than typical retail paint. You can use them for ceiling and narrow spaces. For special purposes, if you need to use trade paints more than twice, you have to pay notably a higher amount.

Besides these two superior categories, we have to know about some significant paints individually in detail. They are below with their highlighting characters.

Matt or flat finish paint

Flat finish paints provide lower durability when you use them in a congested area. It contains a higher amount of pigments and a lower amount of binders and resin. These elements lead the paints to result in better finishing, flourishing color, and low gloss. This paint is highly recommended when you need a superb finish.

All the elements of matt or flat are low water-resistive and allow moisture to come between the wall and the paint coat. Also, none of the matt or flat paints are mildew resistive or can serve the full needs of a bathroom.

Eggshell paint

A top class of paints with a lower level of sheen that reflects a low amount of light. Superior paints to the flat type. You can get the best result from the eggshell if you use it on walls of stairs and entrance paths. It will reflect low light and be less sensitive, which helps to hide finishing imperfections. One more benefit of eggshell paints is that you can get them dried more quickly.

Satin paint

Eggshell and satin paints are some of the notable paints. Considering usability, you can use it the same as eggshell paints. But it is a better choice than the eggshell Because this paint ensures more durability and prevention to bathroom walls than flat or eggshell. Since it is glossier than eggshell paints, it will show finishing imperfections easily.

Silk paint

You can bring out the best result from silk paint if you use it in a natural light-falling area. You can also use silk in narrow places like kitchens. Compared to matt paint, you can get a better result from it. 

Semi-gloss paints

Semi-gloss paint indicates the starting place of gloss paint. You can have higher efficiency from the paint, which is lower than its two other genres.

Gloss paints

A painting that starts with trustworthiness for the bathroom is gloss paint. The brighter the paint, the more superior to use for a bathroom. Using gloss paints, you can have more durability than all the above paints. This paint surpasses semi-gloss and stays under the high gloss paint.

High gloss paints

This type of paint is best suitable for a crowded and overused place. When you color in a bathroom, it must be highly preventive to mildew, water, moisture effects of a hot shower, etc. Low-quality paints can not prevent water from penetrating into bathroom walls.

High gloss paints are perfectly made for overcrowded and narrow spaces like bathrooms, kitchens, etc. They contain moisture-preventive elements. This is what you need precisely. All three paints of the gloss category have better usability than non-gloss paints.

What type of paint is best for a bathroom – finalization

From our experience and experiment, water-based gloss paints are our best choice. These washable paints are also known as latex paints. They contain mildew preventive elements and reflect more light as sheen or glossy paints.

Since sheen or glossy paints are basically three types, it is best to use the most glossy one among the three. Glossy and semi-glossy paints are better than others but inferior to high-gloss paints.

After all glossy paints, Satin paints are in the second category of paints for bathroom use. Since these paints can not produce the best result, we don’t recommend them highly. If you have a low budget and importance on the bathroom, you may consider these.

Oil-based paints allow water to come between the paint coat and the wall. This happening brings volatile organic compounds (VOC) out and creates barriers to breathing in bathrooms. So, we recommend you avoid these paints for bathrooms.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1.    Do you have to use special paint for bathrooms?

Yes, a bathroom needs specialized paint to support its few adverse conditions. A bathroom is a place that becomes wet almost all day due to the touch of water. This water creates stains, bubbles, steam ( a result of hot water), mildew, etc. So, you need specialized paint that can prevent problems and is easy to wash.

2.    What paint to use in the bathroom to prevent mold?

A paint that contains antimicrobial additives can prevent bathroom mold. You will get plenty of options if you search for paints in nearby shops. But you need to choose a paint in which anti-microbial elements are present. These types of paints are sometimes called “mold-resistant paint.”

3.    What color should you not paint a bathroom?

Generally, painting experts suggest not using black, white, yellow, and red colors for a bathroom. Because white is more sensitive to stains and other unwanted objects. Black color absorbs light and causes a deficiency in brightness. This shortage of light will create a barrier to your makeup or grooming.

Red is also an unpopular color. Indeed, we discourage using red in all interior places. The red also creates a deficiency of luster. The matter of suitable and unsuitable paint for a bathroom is not totally fixed. Some experts discourage green, cringy, gray, etc., color usage in a bathroom.

4.    Can you just paint over mold in the bathroom?

To get the best from the paint, keep yourself from painting over the mold. In case you paint over mold, it will not be effective in stopping the mold from growing. What you need here is mold-resistant paint. Before that, clean the mold completely. Otherwise, your mold-resistant paint will not be effective.

Conclusion

We have described to you the most durable and effective paints. Understand our content thoroughly to choose a suitable paint for your bathroom and successfully apply it. Without understanding what type of paint is best for a bathroom, you might choose an imperfect paint. What will result in ultimate damage to your bathroom?

To understand more, please read our nice piece of presentation more times. For the new guys, we cordially suggest if you have enough time, patience, and money, you can have a try. If you are nervous or do not wish to complete the job in the DIY method, hire a professional.

Once you hire a professional, you will see the application of our guide.

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