With an all round development of technology affecting our lifestyle, it is also set to change the way we had been doing some of the very elementary things all thru hundreds of years. One such activity is painting. We are too well aware that most painting jobs need preparation of surface and an essential element of that preparation is application of primer. Now they have developed certain paints, which help you avoid applying primer under certain conditions. Nevertheless, it’s critically important to understand when you must certainly apply primer before going ahead with the paining of your home. Failure to do so could give disastrous results of panting. Let’s understand what primer is exactly and when it should be used.
Technically, paint primer is also a kind of paint but with different properties. It’s designed to improve the adhesion quality of surface before its being covered with paint. Their composition is such that bind them well with the surface, being lot more porous than other types of paint. The characteristics of primer vary with the surface that it’s meant to cover. For instance, the primer used for aluminum surfaces bonds with the surface of the metal thru a chemical reaction that takes place as it gets exposed to certain materials. On the other hand, surfaces like wood and concrete being porous necessitate the use of a primer designed to make a surface even and smooth before the application of paint. Then, there are primers meant to protect the paint and the material from moisture and mold.

While repainting the internal walls of your home, you need to have a closer look at paint that already exists on the walls to assess if you need to use a primer or not. Usually, the walls painted over the last few decades were covered with a kind of latex paint. Such walls covered with latex paint could be saved from the application of a coat of primer. But using primer is important if the walls have water-soluble stains, because primer helps preventing these stains from bleeding thru the fresh coat of paint.
While painting fresh walls with the first coat of paint, it’s again desirable to be applying a coat of primer before you cove those with a paint of your choice of color. In this case the primer provides a tight seal over the drywall and helps new walls from having mold. If the color of existing paint is already dark, it will be worth to cover them with primer before applying paint in light color. That saves you form applying number of coats of light colored paint and thus saves cost of the project.
Having a coat of primer paint is essential when painting or repainting exteriors of your home as they continue to bear rain, snow and wind. Primer is necessarily required while painting such materials because of the additional level of weather resistance that it provides. Outdoor primers do help increasing the lifespan of paints applied on the exteriors. There are outdoor primers available for all types of material, including metal, vinyl, concrete and wood.
Primer should be preferred when painting modern furniture like modern bedroom furniture, particularly if it is made from wood. That’s because wood itself is a porous material. Primer goes to fill those pores and grains of wood allowing you to get a sleek new look thru application of fresh paint. Different primers are need for being used on furniture made from metal, concrete and plastic. Metal primers are needed to save the furniture from getting rusted, but the surface has to be thoroughly cleaned and brushed before applying the primer. Concrete and plastic primer help preparing the surface of furniture getting a nice, smooth coat of new paint.
Whatever type of painting you might decide to go for, you should know that it’s no more necessary to use only the normal white primer for preparing the surface. These days you also get primers that are tinted in a shade quite similar to your choice of paint. That surely helps cutting down the needed number of coats to be applied before completion of your project.