Apart from petty painting jobs, repainting the entire house happens twice or thrice in one’s life time. How do you evaluate this?
As you said this was correct only till recent past, where painting works at home were usually demanded by special events like weddings or as warranted by any dismal domestic appearances. With more disposable income in hand and innumerable choices of enticing brands, painting jobs are done every five years or even in lesser intervals. Paint industry, too, recommends that wall cosmetics be done every five years.
What advice would you give a person looking to redo his home?
Majority of the buyers are allured by colourful TV ads and choose the products without giving a serious thought of whether the product ideally suits their situation at home. Comparing different price bands and properties of various brands would help to zero-in on the ideal product to be applied.
For example, exterior walls may be either open or shaded. Open exteriors are fully exposed to both rains and direct sunlight and hence a superior quality coating is desirable. Shaded exterior walls that are guarded by an extended sun shade or the like and is less exposed to rainwater and direct sunlight.
A cost conscious buyer could go for a less durable paint in the shaded wall, but definitely not on the open wall. These nuances in selecting the ideal painting solution could also economise the bottom line.
How to identify a suitable emulsion?
Emulsions come with various properties. Hard and soft emulsions are available but each one is suited to address distinct problems. The hard ones are with anti-dust properties and found to be resistant to dust. Random cracks which appear on walls could be addressed by soft emulsions with stretchable properties which would cosmetically cover the popping up cracks.
If the prevalence of cracks is more disturbing than the dust, a soft emulsion may be preferred over a hard one. One has to do some research before selecting the ideal coat keeping in mind the prevailing physical conditions.
Engaging an experienced and reliable painter or seeking advice of an architect or engineer is desirable, but doing own research by visiting the web pages of reputed brands would help to find the most ideal solution.
What are the probable pitfalls during purchase?
All paint brands have products in the same price, property and durability band, often confusing the customer.
As the quality scales down from super luxury to luxury, super premium, premium, regular and economy bands, the customer cannot assure whether the right product is given for what it has been paid. Unfortunately, no indication is made on the pack that one is superior or inferior to another.
This condition has given scope for a dealer-painter deal for more business and trade commissions. So a trader with longstanding business and reputation may be preferred as they consider long term sustenance over quick business.
Differentiating the products through star rating would have helped the ordinary customer to easily judge the quality of the paints, but the manufacturers are yet to come up with distinctions.
On global brands
Liberalisation saw many of the reputed and superior quality global paint brands like Jotun, Nippon etal., enter the Indian markets, but they have done reformulations to suit the Indian habits and conditions. Indian painters are tuned with an age old habit of adding and mixing water to whatever quality paints they get, but global products are ready to use directly from the can. Hence they have interestingly come up with Indian versions where water has to be added. Further, many of the foreign variants are not being marketed here as the desi social habits and culture are not found encouraging.
Painting primarily being weather resistant, have we adopted the right practices here?
I remember a cityscape scene while my flight was about to land in Tokyo about two decades ago. Roofs of the entire buildings were neatly and colourfully coated, which I thought was statutory. The Japanese give prime attention to their roof tops which is directly hit by sun and rains. Tropical climate which we experience demands that we focus on the roof tops and ensure durable coating.
On quality standards of paints
More than a century old and worth about Rs.45,000 crore, Indian paint industry is yet to have quality standards. Standards are preferred only for industrial paints and not for decorative paints. But despite of that I would prefer a time tested quality brand over a BIS standard as the latter only endorses a minimum quality.
Any interesting trends you see?
Of late, many people have started to do the painting jobs all by themselves due to labour force crunch and soaring labour rates. They also take pain to research and find what suits their requirement. With exclusive shops even for wood paints, decorative products are being made available for every surface.
