The Four Best Paint Additives I've Used in My Own House (That You Should Try Too)

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Paint can be a cheap way to transform and improve your house, covering up the wear and tear of daily life or bringing a pop of color into your home. The paint you pick up at your local hardware store is pretty powerful stuff, but if you’ve ever struggled to make a DIY paint job look professional, or tried to solve a specific problem with paint, you should know about paint additives.

Paint additives are just what they sound like: Stuff you add to your paint to increase its usefulness or to make it easier to work with. They’re essentially chemicals that interact with the paint or the surface it coats to achieve a specific effect. Many additives are already included in the paint you buy, but you can purchase some specific additives on your own. I’ve used a few to great success—I’ve become a big believer in paint additives to make my DIY paint projects more effective and easier to clean up.

Additives I’ve used

These additives really work wonders, in my experience:

• Floetrol. This is a paint conditioner for water-based paints. Paint conditioners essentially lubricate your paint, making it flow more smoothly off the brush and slowing down the drying time slightly, resulting in a smoother finish with fewer brush strokes. It really works! I used to be the King of Brush Strokes, and adding this to my paint has made a difference. There’s also Penetrol for oil-based paints, but I haven’t used an oil-based paint in a long time.

• Paint hardeners. There’s a reason every garage and basement in the world is filled with old, rusting paint cans filled with swampy, useless muck that used to be paint: It’s a pain to dispose of. A paint hardener is the secret: If you’ve got some old paint to get rid of, add some paint hardener to the can and it turns into a solid that you can safely (and legally) throw into the trash.

• Anti-mildew. If you’re painting a damp area—a bathroom, basement, or even a laundry room—I’ve found that including some anti-mildew additives, in conjunction with an anti-mildew primer, will stop mold and mildew in its tracks. Instead of having to clean and re-paint my bathroom ceiling every year, for example, I haven’t had a problem since using this additive.

• Anti-slip. I wrote about my famously slippery stairs in my old house before I discovered anti-slip additives for paint. Adding some to floor and patio paint creates a slightly textured, nonslip finish that has made my stairs safer—I haven’t seen my life flash before my eyes in months!

Other useful additives

There are other additives you can purchase for your paint projects. I haven’t personally used these, but they’re worth knowing about:

• Scent additives. A scent additive makes your paint smell nice and acts as a room freshener as well. They’re easy to use, and typically last a few months before the smell fades. People use them to mask the harsh smell of fresh paint or just for the temporary scent they bring to a room.

• Textures and flakes. If you want your walls to have a texture to them that mimics stone, sand, or stucco, you can buy an additive that will give that finish to any paint. You can also buy additives that will add glitter or other elements to your paint, if that’s something you’re into.

• Insecticides. You can add insecticides to your paint to kill off/repel bugs like ants, silverfish, or mosquitoes. They don’t last very long, so it’s not a permanent solution. But if you’re concerned about an invasion of bugs, this can be one more weapon in your efforts to keep your house or yard bug-free.

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