Dulux Trade Uniprimer Review

Dulux Trade Uniprimer is a fully water-based adhesion primer, stain block, and undercoat in one. At the time of writing this review, it has been on the market for roughly 6-months. Having used it on several jobs in my role as a Professional Decorator, I thought I’d put pen to paper and give an honest account of its strengths and weaknesses. I hope you find this blog useful.

Key Information

• Base: Water-based
• Drying Time (Touch Dry): 30 minutes (depending on conditions)
• Recoat Time: 1 hour
• Coverage: Up to 10m² per litre
• Tin Sizes Available: 1L, 2.5L, 5L
• Finish: Matt
• VOC Level: Low
• Colour: White and tinted
• Application Methods: Brush, roller, or spray
• Clean-up: Water
• Interior/exterior – both
• Suitable Surfaces: Wood (bare or previously painted), metal (non-ferrous or properly prepped), plaster, brickwork and masonry, MDF and fibreboard, previously painted surfaces.
• Available from: Dulux Decorator centre and some independent trade paint outlets. Click here to see online prices.

My Dulux Trade Uniprimer Review

The first thing to say is that the market is absolutely flooded with adhesion primers nowadays, so it takes a lot for a single product to stand out. This type of paint is very useful to have, mostly to use as an undercoat when painting over difficult surfaces like oil-based gloss, but also as a fast-drying stain block.

Dulux Trade Uniprimer feels different to the other adhesion primers I’ve used. It gives a little resistance off the brush in the same way an oil-based undercoat does. This means it takes fractionally longer to paint, say a door, than it would do with one of the looser primers. However, it’s a lot easier to cut straight lines with Uniprimer. This makes it a joy to use on glass panel windows, skirting board, architrave etc.

The opacity is unreal! It’s genuinely better than any other adhesion primer (water- or oil-based) that I can think of. The picture below illustrates this! Uniprimer is the perfect product to use when painting over stained wood because it not only grips, but it also blocks any tannins that may come through.

Painting over dark wood stain with a light paint usually takes at least 4 coats (an adhesion primer, an undercoat, and two topcoats like satinwood, eggshell, etc). However, because of its unbelievably good opacity, using Uniprimer as the first coat reduces the number of coats overall. In this case, one coat of Uniprimer, followed by two topcoats will be ample.

There are a couple of other benefits with Dulux Trade Uniprimer over rival products. The first is the recoat time, which is an hour! Some of the others are 4 or 6 hours, which means that project completion can be delayed!

The other benefit is the colour availability! One of the things you might do with an adhesion primer is use it to replace your usual undercoat. That’s all well and good if you only paint with white, but what about when you’re using dark colours? You can get Dulux Trade Uniprimer tinted to match the colour of your topcoat.

The Elephant in the Room

I spend a lot of time on social media talking with other Decorators. It’s fair to say that Uniprimer has had a lot of attention since it was launched. Some Decorators absolutely love it! I spoke with one guy at an event recently who was talking like it is a revelation.

But other Decorators talk about ‘poor adhesion’, which isn’t great for an adhesion primer.

I saw a video of one Decorator applying it to uPVC, then scratching it off with his fingernail the next day. Another showed me a screenshot of a conversation he’d had with Dulux Trade where he’d asked for his money back because he couldn’t get it to stick to old oil-based gloss.

I don’t agree with the naysayers about adhesion. I looked at what they said, then went away and tested it. I think Dulux Trade Uniprimer is quite soft if you try and scratch it a few hours, or even a day after you apply it. It’s one of those primers that takes a while to cure and harden up, which presumably it does after you’ve painted over it.

Just to emphasise the point, below there is a very short video of a scratch test I did on the Uniprimer a week after it was applied over stained wood and an oil-based gloss. I couldn’t scratch it away on either with my fingernail, nor the tin opener on my keys. The tin opener did damage the film of the Uniprimer, but it didn’t really break the bond between Uniprimer and surface underneath.

Conclusion

I haven’t tested Dulux Trade Uniprimer as a stain block yet. I will in the coming weeks, then come back to update this review. Water-based stain blocks don’t tend to work as well as their oil-based and shellac-based counterparts. That isn’t to say they’re not useful for blocking stains like black mould.

But as an adhesion primer before applying topcoats, Uniprimer is brilliant. The opacity and ease of use alone is reason enough to use.

Summary