Dulux Quick dry Black Satinwood Metal & wood paint, 0.75L

I painted my skirtings and door frames with this and I've had no issues. only needed two coats and with proper cleaning and sanding it went on smoothly. very easy to clean up after.

I 'm not a professional decorator but I have over fifty years experience of decorating every house I've ever lived in and those of friends and relatives.

I chose this paint over other ones on the B&Q shelf as I've always been happy with the Dulux range, finding them to be good hard-wearing paints which give good coverage and are predictable and easy to apply.

These were particularly important qualities in this case as it was black paint I intended to apply to skirtings to compliment grey oak laminate flooring which I was laying with my son-in law.

With dark colours it's more difficult to achieve a good even coverage and several coats are usually necessary. I was prepared for this and also paid attention to the use of a synthetic brush as per the notes on the tin.

Well the best laid plans........

I found the paint to have a very strange quality and to be almost unmanageable. The pigment seems to be suspended in a sort of slippery gel-like medium which doesn't bind well with the pigment and in fact when laid on the wood seems to contain little pigment at all. The wood certainly becomes wet from the medium but it's simply a transparent wetness with little or no pigment in it. After a few strokes I thought I better give it another thorough stirring but it made no difference.

I would liken the experience to trying to paint with blackberry jam. The clear "jelly" lays on well enough but the blackberry part of it appears simply as faint streaks of colour randomly and sparely applied to the wood.

I tried holding the brush at different angles to the wood, painting heavily, lightly, slowly, quickly, long strokes, short stokes, stippling; it all made no difference.

This paint will not flow off the brush like any paint I've ever used, I found it very frustrating. Trying to get an even line along an edge is simply impossible.
Quivering/vibrating the brush, a technique I use to delicately finish along edges adjacent to other surfaces, does nothing to encourage the paint to leave the brush. Little imperfections in the wood surface will not fill with paint, nothing of subtlety works with this stuff.

The only way I got any degree of coverage was to slather it on thickly and messily by holding the overloaded brush almost flat to the surface of the wood. Not a method to be recommended. The paint took an absolute age to apply as I had to work very slowly and meticulously watching every centimeter of every stroke and repeating over and over.
I actually enjoy painting but there was absolutely no pleasure in this chore. The result was awful as you might expect. Using dollops of the stuff obviously results in drips and runs galore and leaves a messy uneven finish which will almost certainly have little durability.

In the end I had to apply five laborious coats and I have to say that it's the worst job I've done in over fifty years of DIY-ing. I would never use this paint again and would strongly advise anyone considering it to use anything else at all.

Blackberry jam?

I bought this product a few weeks back, it is the worst Dulux paint I have ever used!! Goes on watery leaves streaks no matter how many coats are applied. Also the colour is no where near black as stated! I went I store to return unfortunately I also received the worst customer service, when raised the issue with the paint. Overall a terrible experience.

what they all said. It's translucent and so no matter how many coats you use, you'll see the strokes and undercoat. Waste of money!

I wish I’d have read the reviews before I purchased this. I bought this due to my usual paint being out of stock. I’d spent all week in my spare time preparing woodwork. Finally I applied my first coat. What a disaster. It’s streaky, grey, horrible paint. So I decided to see what others thought and the reviews confirmed it’s not good. I returned this to B&Q and was given a full refund for the worst paint I’ve ever bought. My usual was back in stock. I wouldn’t waste your money or time.