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

Painting can be an inexpensive way to transform and improve your home, hiding the wear and tear of everyday life or adding a pop of color to your home. The paint you buy at your local hardware store is pretty potent 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 exactly what they sound like: substances you add to your paint to increase its usefulness or to make it easier to work with. They are basically chemicals that interact with the paint or the surface it is covering to achieve a specific effect. Many additives are already included in the paint you buy, but you can purchase some specific additives yourself. I have used a few of these with great success. I am now a firm believer in paint additives to make my DIY painting projects more effective and easier to clean up.

Additives I 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 more fluid and slightly slowing the drying time, resulting in a smoother finish with fewer brush strokes. It really works! I was the king of brushstrokes, and adding it to my painting made a difference. There is also Penetrol for oil paints, but I haven’t used oil paint in a long time.

• Paint hardeners. There’s a reason why every garage and basement in the world is filled with old, rusty paint cans filled with boggy, useless sludge that was once paint: it’s hard to throw away. A paint hardener is the secret: If you have old paint to dispose of, add a little paint hardener to the can and it will turn into a solid that you can safely (and legally) throw in the trash.

• Anti-mold. If you are painting a wet area (a bathroom, basement, or even a laundry room), I have found that including certain anti-mold additives, in conjunction with an anti-mold primer, will stop the mold in its tracks. Instead of having to clean and repaint my bathroom ceiling every year for example, I no longer have any problems since using this additive.

• Non-slip. I wrote about my famous slippery stairs in my old house before I discovered anti-slip paint additives. Adding it to floor and deck paint creates a lightly textured, non-slip 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 painting projects. I haven’t personally used them, but they are worth knowing:

• Fragrance additives. A scented additive gives your paint a pleasant smell and also acts as a room freshener. They are easy to use and usually last a few months before the smell disappears. People use them to mask the harsh smell of wet paint or just for the temporary scent they add to a room.

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

• Insecticides. You can add insecticides to your paint to kill/repel insects 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 insect infestation, this can be an added weapon in your efforts to keep your home or yard bug-free.