Marine Paint..... Where Do You Start?!

We appreciate that choosing the right paint for your boat can be a difficult and rather daunting decision, particularly when there is such a range of products that all appear to do a similar job. To make things a little easier we have tried to put together a number of short articles that give information, advice and hopefully make marine paint less of a mystery. We plan to continually update these pages to keep them as relevant as possible. If you feel there is anything we should be writing about please don't hesitate to contact us.

The first thing to understand is that not all paint is created equal. There are many different types of paint and many different ways of classifying them. We have decided to break the paints down into four catergories:

- alkyd (oil) based paints

- acrylic based paints

- two-pack polyurethanes

- two-pack epoxys

- antifouling

It is also important to understand the various defects that can occur during application, shortly afterwards or much further down the line. To this end we have written a short article on Paint Failures which should help to prevent problems before they occur (or at least provide advice on how to fix them afterwards).

If you are looking to paint as small boat constucted from wood or fibreglass then we have information on typical paint systems that can be applied.

There is also information and answers to the most frequently asked questions on our FAQs page.

Here's how not to apply marine paint...