Dulux Weathershield > Reviews (6)

Having recently had a new hardwoodfront door fitted and wanting it to stay nice for as long as possible I was looking for a high quality paint to protect it and chose to use the Weathershieldexterior paint system:

~The range and price~
Weathershield is the range of exterior paints by Dulux, there are two main types: masonary paint and those for wood and metal. The type I wanted was the wood on this occasion. Standing in Wilkinsons with it's vast array of exterior paints I could see that at £9.99 for a tin of Dulux Weathershield gloss, £9.99 for the Weathershield undercoat and £9.99 for Weathershield exterior preservative primer (all 750ml size, there are also 2.5 ltr sizes at £19.99, although my Wilkinsons only stocked undercoat in this size) this was not going to be cheap. But with a 6 year protection guarantee on all Weathershield paints I hoped this would be worth it. A word of caution, to qualify for the guarantee you have to use the whole Weathershield system, and all wood must be sound.

~Weathershield exterior preservative primer~
This is necessary to seal any bare untreated wood, in my case the whole door! Having sanded and wiped down the door it was prepared for it's first coat, the preservative primer. It has a screw top, which is child resistant, but I managed to open it okay (and I'm weak and feeble), this must then be decanted into a metal container. I had bought (and eaten) an extra large tin of pears especially (nothing like being pre-peared!), and this served the purpose nicely. The primer is a dark bluey green tinted liquid and it smells strong like white spirit. It contains very high VOC (Volatile Orgainic Compounds) which the tin informs me will contribute to atmospheric pollution. Gasp, cough, no kidding. It brushes on nicely with no bubbles but as it's liquid you do have to watch for splatter and runs. Doing all 6 sides of the door took half an hour and used up half the tin, and it was dry within half an hour. The end result was a darkening as if it had been wood stained only with a bluey green tint, at this stage the neighbours were probably desperately hoping this wasn't permanent! You can recoat with the undercoat within 2 hours or 16-24 hours later, I chose to wait. I found the nap of the wood rose after applying this despite having sanded previously so I had to give a very light sanding to take the roughness down. For a day after applying this I had a dry throat, prickly eyes and felt headachy. I'm one of those people who does react to higher VOC paints so this did not surprise me. The test for how well the primer has worked is how well the undercoat goes on...

~Weathershield exterior undercoat~
This was brilliant white and had to be stirred before application, although it looked homogeneous enough to me before stirring. Barely any odour at all here, and it is classed as low VOC too, so I suffered no ill effects during or after use and as it was water-based my brush could be cleaned with water. You are instructed to apply two coats of this before the gloss, the undercoat brushed on smoothly, it is a fairly runny consistency and I did have some dripping and splattering despite not overloading my brush.

To coat the front, back, sides and top of the door took me 3 hours and it was touch dry within an hour. the first coat was fairly dense coverage (full marks to the primer), but as instructed I duly applied a second coat, using three quarters of the tin. The end result was a matt white door which looked so good I almost considered topping it off with white gloss.

~Weathershield Exterior Gloss~
Well I said I 'almost' chose white, but for reasons of practicality (and not priministerial delusions) I chose black gloss out of the limited colour range. Other colours I saw were brilliant white, yellow and red. The tin advises not to apply dark colours on a South facing elevations as the direct sunlight will fade them, as we are East facing this was okay. I don't enjoy using gloss paint

due to the stickyness, the smell and the bits of fluff which seem to adhere themselves so this was the part of the job I was dreading. The advice was again to stir before use, although like the undercoat it appeared homogenous enough before this. The VOC is classed as high so not great for the environment but I did not find the smell overly noxious, I did have a dry throat while working with it but found it cleared up as soon as I was finished. The consistency is fairly thick, sticky and gloopy although this has it's pros and cons.The cons being fluff tends to find it and stick to it (I waited till dry and sanded this off) and it takes a while to apply, it took me 3 hours to cover the front and sides of the door. The benefits of the thicker consistency however do mean it does not splatter or drip easily, this was useful when painting around hinges etc as I found it stayed where it was put instead of running onto the brassware. I was pleased to find there were no tell tale brush marks with this paint, and I actually went back to an area where the paint had run slightly (yes, I had overloaded the brush!) and evened it out after an hour, with no problems. This is because the paint has a long drying time and that brings me to it's main glitch, it is detailed as being recoatable within 16 hours but the tin does not estimate touch dry time. I found the first coat took a whopping 6 hours to be touch dry so I would advise applying it first thing in the morning, although subsequent coats touch dried in 4 hours. The tin advises one or two coats and states darker colours may need more. I needed three coats of gloss, the first was patchy, the second streaky but the third was thankfully perfect, this used two thirds of the tin. As I was using black paint patchiness of the coverage was most noticable, but I would give even lighter colours at least two coats to be sure of proper protection.

CONCLUSION

I may have had to apply 6 coats of various layers and the VOC's were higher than I would have liked but the door does look great. At only 2 weeks since application it is a little early to comment first hand on the durability, this is something I will come back to this review and add in the future. I have detailed durability as long lasting as there is a 6 year guarantee to that effect.