Buying paint

Whilst wielding a paintbrush and a 1 litre tin of woodstain that cost £14, I wondered what is it that makes paints so expensive?

Well there was that TiO2 price rise a while back...

Is that used in all paint, or just white? This was black ash woodstain ...

Which reminds me, why IS paint so expensive these days. what critical ingredient is worth this sum? Brian

Here's some blurb from one woodstain manufacturer, "..contains nano-particle sized, transparent, titanium dioxide as a sunscreen to prevent ultraviolet light damage to the wood.."

So seems like there is at least one that does ;)

titanium dioxide is also used in cake making ...

And it's been used in white emulsions for a long long time - this is a not a new compound.

Of course not, just that there was a pricing spike a couple of years ago which roughly doubled its cost...

Glidden & Leyland are cheaper & good. I'm told Wilko are too.

NT

I don't know about topcoat but I recently tried Leyland Trade Brilliant White Acrylic Primer Undercoat on skirting and architrave. After three coats there was still showthrough. There may be some paint chemistry thing going on but, by contrast, one coat (on top) of Dulux Primer and Undercoat for Wood has done the job.

I wish I had bought the Dulux first but it was mightily expensive.

James

Should that make a differnece? horse meat isn't new either but it really shouldn't be used as a secret beef replacement ingredient.

Titanium dioxide was used to replace white lead oxide

Isn't the key word "Cartel"? I noticed the other day that Dulux is [now] owned by Akzonobel -- dunno how long they've owned them ... oh yes I do -- just wiki'd them: they bought ICI in 2008, but I'm sure they didn't use to advertise the fact on Dulux paint cans.

"All your base[coat]s [and topcoats] are belong to us"!

John

Is it now time to go back to mixing your own paint as was done a century ago?

Alibaba has it about USD2000/tonne. So there can't be more than a couple of quids worth in a tin of paint.

Andy

Isn't paint pricing interesting.

We're painting the house ATM & buy (Dulux Trade Weathershield) from Dulux on-line.

That's not a "short-term, we'll sort it out tomorrow" hiccup, those prices were the same when we bought some in May.

That's just stupid - encouraging waste.

There are also times I need 1l of emulsion but that's impossible to buy even in common colours like white and magnolia.

There's been a lot of R&D over the last 5 years as the EU keeps banning the products they use in paints/varnishes, and they have to find some alternatives which work anywhere near as well.

Our local shop does 1 litre tins of Dulux emulsion for mixed paints.

Jonathan