Little Greene Intelligent A.S.P. Review

Little Greene is a premium paint and wallpaper manufacturer, who pride themselves on their expertise and knowledge of historical decorating trends – hence their partnership with the National Trust, with whom they work on both paint colours and formulations, and wallpaper designs. They are a UK-based, family-run business.

Little Greene Intelligent A.S.P. is a sort of hybrid between a water-based undercoat and an adhesion primer.  ASP stands for “All Surface Primer”, and Little Greene describe it as “a water-based single primer undercoat suitable for all interior and exterior surfaces”.  It’s available tinted to any colour in the extensive Little Greene range, in either a 1L or 2.5L size.

Like most water-based primer-undercoats, it’s touch dry in an hour or two, but the recommended recoat time is 4 hours – not a problem if you’re aware of it and plan your day accordingly.

It’s low odour, child-safe and dries to a matt finish, with a coverage rate of approximately 14 square meters per litre.  Little Greene claim it can be used on existing coatings, wood, non-ferrous metals, tiles, glass and many plastics. Click here to see online prices.

Why Use Little Greene Intelligent A.S.P.?

Let’s cut to the chase and answer the question I asked myself when I recently used this product for the first time; why would I use Little Greene ASP as a primer-undercoat? There are plenty of other great water-based adhesion primers which I know and trust, which are cheaper?

Well, I found out the answer to that question the hard way, so permit me to tell you the story of a job I completed recently.

I was working in a large property that dated back to 1900. Lovely house, lovely customers, but let’s just say they were slightly indecisive when it came to choosing colours.

In the living room, I’d done loads of prep, painted the ceiling, and was running out of things to do while waiting for them to decide on colours. So, I decided, as the woodwork had been prepped (and was previously painted with decidedly discoloured oil-based gloss), I’d get a coat of adhesion primer on while I was waiting.

They then announced that they’d decided on the colours for the room, including a colour for the woodwork (I’d priced it assuming white, but whatever).  All surfaces to be painted using Little Greene; Absolute Matt on the walls, and Intelligent Eggshell on all the woodwork.

Although the shade for the woodwork wasn’t what I would call a particularly strong colour, it was still a colour, not white. For all the good things about Little Greene Intelligent Eggshell, it did not cover my white adhesion primer in two coats. It took three.  Extra work I hadn’t priced for, extra time, extra hassle.

To cut a long story short, I then moved on to the next room, where they also chose Little Greene colours for everything. This time forewarned and forearmed, I bought a tin of Little Greene Intelligent ASP.

Because it’s tinted to the Little Greene colour (although the company themselves say that ASP tends to come out slightly paler than the finish coats), it works as an undercoat and adds more depth to the colour, meaning I only needed two topcoats over it. The overall finish was better too.

So, by combining the functions of an adhesion primer and an undercoat into one product, Little Greene Intelligent A.S.P. saved me a coat of paint (and as the next “room” was the hall, stairs and landing, the amount of woodwork involved, and therefore the amount of time involved, was considerable).

Little Greene Intelligent A.S.P. is dead easy to apply using a synthetic brush or a good quality paint roller. It dries quite quickly, so you need to work reasonably quickly too to keep a wet edge. Don’t be tempted to go back over areas you painted half an hour ago – it’s almost better to leave a few “grins” than to try touching up when the paint is tacky, as you’ll be left with awful brush marks; grins you can hide with the topcoats.

Final Thoughts

This isn’t a product I’d use every day.  For most jobs, where you’re painting the woodwork white, your regular white undercoat or adhesion primer (depending on the situation) will do the job.

But if your woodwork (or tiles, glass, plastic, etc.)  is being painted with a Little Greene topcoat in a colour, then I would certainly recommend using Little Greene Intelligent A.S.P. as your primer-undercoat; it definitely helps with the depth of the colour, and could well save you a coat of paint (and the associated time and materials).

Little Greene specify this to go under their other paint products for a reason – it works, so I’d recommend following their advice. Click here to see online prices.

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