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We’re here to help! Use our scheme finder to locate your nearby Community RePaint scheme to pick up affordable, leftover paint passed on for reuse, and keep reading to find out more about our paint recommendations for different surfaces, plus some useful top tips.

Navamin Studio / Beazy

Interior walls and ceilings

The best paints for walls and ceilings are matt or silk emulsion and water-based eggshell paint.

Emulsion is a water-based paint that dries quickly and can be applied using paint brushes or rollers, for a faster application.

Depending on the type of emulsion, sometimes two or three coats will be needed. Check your paint container for coverage advice.

Matt emulsion is great for hiding imperfections on walls. This is because matt surfaces do not reflect light, and therefore an imperfect wall will look great in any different light conditions. Silk emulsion, on the other hand, has a ‘mid-sheen finish’ and reflects a little light. This is great for  giving rooms a bright and airy feel.

The composition of silk paint is also more durable than matt paint, which means you can wipe silk wall finishes easily. This makes it great for kitchens, bathrooms, and heavy use areas, such as hallways. However, as silk emulsions do reflect some light, any imperfections in a wall may stand out.

Find out more about emulsion paint here. 

Eggshell is a really versatile paint that can be used on many different surfaces. Water-based eggshell is suitable for use on interior walls and ceilings, while oil-based eggshell is suitable for woodwork, radiators and metal (more details below).

In terms of sheen, eggshell sits somewhere between a matt and a silk finish, and the paint also comprises more resin than emulsion, meaning that eggshell walls can be easily wiped down without damaging the finish or paint adhesion to the wall – an ideal candidate for grime hotspot kitchen walls and ceilings. Find out more about eggshell paint in our blog post here!

Community RePaint Cambridgeshire / Michael_Laut at pixabay

Exterior walls

Masonry paint is the ideal candidate for exterior walls, and can be used on a range of exterior surfaces, including brickwork, concrete,  stone, render and pebble dash.

Masonry paint is specifically designed for external use and can therefore withstand outdoor conditions unlike emulsion paints, and acts as an external layer to protect the beneath wall again damage due to weathering and pollution. There are two main types of masonry paint – textured, which is great at concealing minor blemishes and hairline cracks, and smooth, which goes a lot further.

652234 at pixabay / painting with leftover paint from the Community RePaint network

Woodwork

There are many different types of paint that we recommend using when it comes to woodwork.

Knotting paint is a type of sealer that should be applied to resinous areas, especially knots, in wood, before application of undercoats or finishes, for example, satinwood, eggshell or gloss. Without the application of knotting paint, wooden surfaces painted with an undercoat, or finish paint can discolour due to staining from the resin in the knot.

Using a primer before applying an undercoat or finish paint is also preferred when painting new or bare wood, as a primer helps to ensure good adhesion to the bare surface before application of undercoat or finish paint.

Once the wooden surface has been primed, the next stage of the painting process is to apply an undercoat to the wooden surface. Undercoats are full-bodied paint, that can be both water-based or solvent-based, with more pigment than a topcoat, and a good covering power. Undercoats are essential if the surface is to be painted a paler colour.

Next, choose your finish paint. This could be satinwood, eggshell, gloss (solvent or water-based – find out more here), a non-drip paint, varnish or wood stain. Find out more about common types of paint here. 

 

Etadly from pixabay / Max Vakhtbovych from Pexels

Radiators and metal

When painting radiators and metal surfaces, we recommend using a primer first to reduce the risk of corrosion to the metal surface, and following that use a radiator/enamel paint, gloss, eggshell or satinwood.

Miodrag Kitanović from Pexels / ReColour emulsion paint

Bare plaster

When painting bare plaster, first apply one coat of emulsion, diluted with one part water to four parts paint or plaster primer, followed by two more coats of emulsion.

Community RePaint has over 65 schemes across the country, providing paint starting from £2 a litre. If you need paint for your home or community project, find your nearest scheme here.

 

The group included representatives from a number of organisations, including paint manufacturers, DIY retailers and environmental organisations. The Waste Wagon project found that we tend to store large volumes of leftover, reusable paint in our sheds, garages and cupboards. As part of the project, this leftover paint was collected from householders, along with other DIY materials and hazardous items. At the end of the project, the paint was given to local charities and groups, which highlighted the demand for affordable paint amongst these organisations, as well as a need amongst individuals and families on low income.

From these two activities, the collection and redistribution of leftover paint, the model for the Community RePaint network was born. It was established by Resource Futures with support from Dulux who became our sole sponsor in 2008. The first two Community RePaint schemes were set up in Leeds and Ealing in 1993. Today we have expanded to over 65 schemes covering all corners of the United Kingdom.

In 2015 we launched our first paint remanufacturing centre at our scheme in March, Cambridgeshire, which was quickly followed by our second on the Wirral in 2016. The remanufacturing centres have allowed us to take the next step in paint reuse – reprocessing more leftover paint, ensuring its quality and longevity, and then making it available in new Community RePaint branded containers to community organisations (especially those with premises to decorate) and families on low incomes. Our remanufactured paint is now available at some of our schemes or can be ordered directly from us.

Click on image to see a larger version

If you would like to purchase affordable paint, you can find your nearest scheme here. Planning a large scale project? If you require over 60 litres of paint, you can order ReColour remanufactured paint here. If you have paint that you would like to donate, find your nearest drop off point here.

Staff and volunteers from Community RePaint Morpeth have been collecting paint that would otherwise have gone for disposal and redistributed it to individuals, charities and community groups at affordable prices to help brighten homes and community spaces.

Stobhill Link operates various initiatives and projects to better the lives of disadvantaged people living within Stobhill, Morpeth and throughout Southeast Northumberland. They offer volunteer opportunities and address local issues such as health and wellbeing, unemployment, skills building, horticulture and social inclusion. Alongside all of this, they operate the Community RePaint Morpeth scheme.

The scheme collects useable, leftover paint from businesses, retailers and paint manufacturers in the local area and in the past 10 years alone, the scheme has collected more than 14,000 litres of paint. They have redistributed over 11,000 litres of paint to local communities, saving money and brightening the lives in Morpeth and surrounding communities.

“The aim of celebrating our birthday is not only to mark this important milestone, but also to raise awareness of the scheme locally so more people can benefit,” said Community Coordinator Sarah Robinson. “Community RePaint Morpeth offers a simple, local solution to the problem of waste paint. By reusing leftover paint in our community, we can bring a splash of colour to the lives of those who need it the most and help to protect the planet by preventing perfectly good paint from being disposed of.”

The UK wide Community RePaint network manager, Martin Pearse, reflected “Community RePaint Morpeth have done a fantastic job over the last 20 years. The celebrations provide a great opportunity to recognise all the hard work that has gone into making the scheme such a success and to reflect on all their achievements which has brightened community spaces and homes over the years. We are excited to continue supporting the scheme and look forward to seeing what they accomplish in years to come.”

If you are a trader, manufacturer or retailer with leftover paint you can contact the scheme to find out how they can help you.

If you need paint to redecorate your home, or if you are a charity or community group in need of paint for a project, get in touch with Community RePaint Morpeth to find out more enquiries@ncenterprise.org.uk / 01670 519575 and to book an appointment to purchase paint. They are based at 37 Shields Road, Stobhill, Morpeth, Northumberland, NE61 2SA.

The team at Prince’s Trust contacted Community RePaint interested in purchasing white masonry leftover paint for their mural project. The central Community RePaint team liaised with the Prince’s Trust to link them up with their local Community RePaint Liverpool scheme, run by Big Help Project, to purchase affordable paint for their community project.

Alongside collecting leftover paint for reuse from local retailers, businesses and traders, which is sorted, processed and displayed at the scheme, available for local individuals, families and community groups to purchase from £2 a litre, Community RePaint Liverpool also redistributes ReColour remanufactured paint.

ReColour remanufactured paint is bulk produced from leftover paint that is filtered, treated and blended to produce a high-quality range of emulsion, masonry and chalk paint, available in over 20 colours. The paint is available to purchase from some schemes within the network (click here to search for your nearby scheme) or, for projects requiring over 60 litres of paint, ReColour remanufactured paint can also be ordered directly to your project’s door. Click here for more information. 

For this project, the Prince’s Trust team opted to purchase two 5-litre tubs of Brilliant White masonry ReColour paint, which our Liverpool Community RePaint scheme delivered to the project’s door.

Caroline Murphy, Programme Support Officer at the Prince’s Trust let us know:

“We had a great experience with the staff at Community Repaint. The staff at Community RePaint Liverpool were helpful and understanding about a last-minute change of plan and arranged an alternative day for the paint to be delivered. Great quality paint made our project look great!”

The white masonry paint was used to whitewash the garden wall at Linacre Community Centre, Bootle, to enable the young adults participating in the Prince’s Trust Programme to use the wall as a blank canvas, to design and create a bright and fun mural to add a splash of colour to the community centre’s garden.

At the end of the project, the students unveiled the mural with a handover presentation to the owners to the community centre.

Megan, one of the participants taking part in the Prince’s Trust Programme, let us know:

“The community project was good. We all worked together as a team and thanks to the help of Community RePaint, we made the garden area look clean and tidy with a nice mural painted on the wall.”

Community RePaint has over 65 schemes across the country, providing paint starting from £2 a litre. If you need paint for your home, community project, or a mural like this one, find your nearest scheme here.

So Maureen, what do you do at the Play And Recycling Centre and why did you become a Community RePaint scheme?

The Play And Recycling Centre was approached by Derby City Council back in 2000, to see if we would be interested in running a paint reuse scheme as part of the Community RePaint Network. Our scheme was launched during October 2000’s environmental week. Our Community RePaint scheme runs in parallel to our scrapstore, both attracting customers from the Derby area into the centre.

I have been the Centre Coordinator for the Play And Recycling Centre since April 1999, which originated solely as a community scrapstore 30 years ago. We collect in resources from local, regional and sometime national companies which are then sorted and displayed for our scrapstore members to access.

The other key member of our team involved in our Community RePaint scheme is Dennis, who has been with the scheme since 2002. Dennis was employed as the paint store controller at the Play And Recycling Centre until he retired. Now he volunteers as our paint store controller.

Can you tell us what your typical working day is like and possibly share your top tip for managing your business?

Each day usually starts with a cuppa. Dennis, our paint controller, deals with the day -to -day sorting and processing of leftover paint, passed on for reuse to our scheme and also provides customer service and advice to our customers. The paint we collect in comes from various sources, including our local Household Waste Recycling Centre, the nearby Dulux Decorator Centre and other local retailers and businesses. We also have a team of volunteers who help with collections, admin and revenue.

My role is more about keeping the paint scheme, scrapstore and centre open. This might be writing bids, organising sale days as well as recruiting volunteers. No two days are the same.

What have been your scheme’s biggest achievements thus far?

At Play And Recycling Centre, we are currently celebrating 30 years since opening. Our paint scheme has also been open for 22 years. Between 2011 and 2022, we have collected in over 46,000 litres of paint which we’re extremely proud of. Being able to help families and community groups decorate their homes and community spaces is a fantastic feeling.

Do you have any stories from the community you’d like to share?

Many of our customers visit our centre during difficult times of their lives. These people are our best advocates for our service. One customer, who visited our Community RePaint scheme many years ago, when she was a single mum and struggling, is now a local community leader, who came back to help us write a bid, as she spoke from her experience. She remembered the help and warm welcome she had received when she originally visited us all those years ago.

Do you have any painting tips that you can share with us?

One of the biggest tips Dennis gives to new tenants or homeowners is to tackle one room at a time. Often people come in with a long list and this can be overwhelming so he suggests they work on one room at a time and tells them they can come back when they are ready to tackle the next room.

What’s next for Community RePaint Derby?

In October 2023, to celebrate our anniversary month, we are hoping to hold a month-long free registration to encourage new members to join us at Play And Recycling centre. We also have a paint sale booked in for May.

For more information about Community RePaint Derby, click here to view their scheme page.

Staff and volunteers from Community RePaint Basingstoke have been collecting paint that would otherwise have gone for disposal and redistributed it to individuals, charities and community groups at affordable prices to help brighten homes and community spaces.

Community Furniture Project Basingstoke provides practical support for people through reuse, together with varied volunteering, supported volunteering and accredited training opportunities. The project sells a wide range of donated furniture, electrical and household items including chairs, sofas, tables, beds, fridges, washing machines, bric-a-brac and of course, affordable paint.

The scheme collects useable, leftover paint from businesses, retailers and paint manufacturers in the local area and in the past 10 years alone, the scheme has collected more than 28,300 litres of paint. They have redistributed over 17,000 litres of paint to local communities, brightening the lives of approximately 28,000 lives in Basingstoke and surrounding communities.

Project Manager Phelim O’Hagan has said: “Community RePaint Basingstoke offers a simple, local solution to the problem of waste paint. By reusing leftover paint in our community, we can bring a splash of colour to the lives of those who need it the most and help to protect the planet by preventing perfectly good paint from being disposed of.”

The UK wide Community RePaint network manager, Martin Pearse, reflected “Community RePaint Basingstoke have done a fantastic job over the last 18 years. The celebrations provide a great opportunity to recognise all the hard work that has gone into making the scheme such a success and to reflect on all their achievements which has brightened community spaces and homes over the years. We are excited to continue supporting the scheme and look forward to seeing what they accomplish in years to come.”

If you are a trader, manufacturer or retailer with leftover paint you can contact the scheme to find out how they can help you.

If you need paint to redecorate your home, or if you are a charity or community group in need of paint for a project, get in touch with Community RePaint Basingtoke to find out more phelim@cfpbasingstoke.org / 01256 320 700, or visit them during their opening hours to purchase paint. They are based at Unit 6 Joule Road, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XH and are open Monday to Friday: 9am – 5pm and Saturday: 9am – 12:15pm, 1pm to 5pm.

So Karen, what do you do at Groundwork’s ‘The Shed’ and why did you become a Community RePaint scheme?

Groundwork is a charity with a green heart. We work across Yorkshire enabling local people in the community to make positive changes to their lives, to live and work in greener ways.  We develop, design and host a range of projects to support local communities, such as creating parks and community gardens to enable people to access nature and improve their emotional and physical well-being. We also have our Green Doctors initiative – an energy debt advice and support service that aims to help those living in cold homes. The Shed is a project developed by Groundwork Yorkshire for all those who enjoy making and doing.

Hull’s Community RePaint scheme began back in 2012, run by Paul Clarke and the team at Visibility. In July 2021, Paul retired and Groundwork took over the Community RePaint scheme as we had worked previously with Paul and were luckily in the process of taking on The Shed Building.

We decided to change the scheme’s name to ‘Hull & Humber’ to reflect that we are expanding into the Humber region of  North East Lincolnshire, to enable communities along the Humber to benefit from our Community RePaint scheme and use affordable, surplus paint for their painting projects.

Alongside running the Community Repaint scheme, we offer daily drop-in sessions for people who want to come and learn woodwork and upcycling skills, soft crafts and more.  We have dedicated woodwork, metalwork and soft craft areas, plus a sewing room, used by locals, aged seven to 87! We run numerous other sessions to help the community, like women’s skill share, pupil enrichment, and garden shedders. Visit our Facebook page to find out more about these activities.

Can you tell us what your typical working day is like and possibly share your top tip for managing your business?

There really is no typical day for us at The Shed which is one of the joys of our work. One day we may be dealing with a paint donation from a local business, and the next we may be supporting someone suffering with anxiety to access energy debt advice or a free cooker.

At Groundwork, we are very early on in our Community Repaint journey. In this short time is to set-up good partnerships with local businesses that donate their paint, and other local organisations that can help support and promote your work, in ways that are often unexpected.

Another tip is to never underestimate the power of paint and how discussions over paint can really enable people to open up and talk about themselves. It has enabled us to support people in so many different ways, and it all started with a conversation about paint.

Community RePaint Hull & Humber turned 10 in 2022, how did you celebrate and what have been your scheme’s biggest achievements thus far?

To celebrate our tenth anniversary, we held a half-day event at The Shed and invited the public, local community group donors, existing customers and our wider service users to join in the celebrations.  Our biggest achievement thus far I think is to still be here and still growing.

 

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A post shared by Community RePaint (@communityrepaint)

Do you have any stories from the community you’d like to share?

This year we have been able to help a local artist, who has been working with Ukrainian refugees to create a wonderful mural on an old metal container, using leftover paint from our scheme. We have also provided paint to the Library of Stuff to paint their new community store and enabled Riding For The Disabled to repaint their equipment and stables. We have also provided and delivered paint to a lady suffering with severe anxiety, enabling her to redecorate her living room.

Do you have any painting tips that you can share with us?

If you want to get a distressed look when upcycling furniture, sprinkle rock salt onto the wet paint and allow to dry before sanding.  When you sand, this will give a lovely effect that looks more like gradual aging than dry brush techniques.  You can use PVA  glue to create a crackle glaze effect. Paint your wood with a dark colour, such as black, allow it to dry and then apply a coat of PVA. When it has dried a little but is still tacky, apply your light coat of paint over the top and dry with a hair dryer.

What’s next for Community RePaint Hull & Humber?

We would like to secure some additional funding to help us develop our scheme further, to collect and redistribute even more paint in the Hull & Humber area.

For more information about Community RePaint Hull & Humber, click here to view their scheme page.

Staff and volunteers from Community RePaint Blackburn have been collecting paint that would otherwise have gone for disposal and redistributed it to individuals, charities and community groups at affordable prices to help brighten homes and community spaces.

SAMS Scrapstore collects materials that would otherwise be heading for landfill for community groups, individuals and schools to recycle and reuse, often for craft projects. The Scrapstore operates on a membership basis with individuals, groups and schools able to join annually and then visit our Blackburn based store in person, to see for themselves what’s on offer. From fabrics and ribbon to cardboard cones and zips, there is a huge array of materials for your next project.

In the past 5 years the scheme has prevented more than 10,000 litres of paint from going to waste. This has brightened the lives of over 14,500 lives in Blackburn and surrounding communities. The scheme collects useable, leftover paint from businesses, retailers and paint manufacturers in the local area.

If you are a trader, manufacturer or retailer with leftover paint you can contact the scheme to find out how they can help you.

If you need paint to redecorate your home, or if you are a charity or community group in need of paint for a project, get in touch with Community RePaint Blackburn to find out more 01254 291271 / sams@cbpartners.org, or visit them during their opening hours to purchase paint.

They are based at SAMS@EnergyZone, Newfield Drive, Blackburn, BB2 3UA and are open Monday and Tuesday 10am – 4:30pm, Wednesday and Thursday 1pm – 4:30pm.

Staff and volunteers from Community RePaint Cornwall have been collecting paint that would otherwise have gone for disposal and redistributed it to individuals, charities and community groups at affordable prices to help brighten homes and community spaces.

In the past 5 years the scheme has prevented more than 11,600 litres of paint from going to waste. This has brightened the lives of over 10,300 lives in Cornwall and surrounding communities. The scheme collects useable, leftover paint from businesses, retailers and paint manufacturers in the local area.

This has included projects such as Beach Guardian, a Community Interest Company based in Cornwall that used leftover paint from the scheme to brighten up their mission centre, where groups come along to find out more about their work and then walk to the beach for a beach clean! The scheme has also bought colour to the beautiful beaches of Cornwall, providing leftover paint for food stalls.

Before and after for the Beach Guardians HQ

Food stalls at a beach in Cornwall

If you are a trader, manufacturer, or retailer with leftover paint you can contact the scheme to find out how they can help you.

If you need paint to redecorate your home, or if you are a charity or community group in need of paint for a project, get in touch with Community RePaint Cornwall to find out more communityrepaintcornwall@gmail.com / 07480 135818, or visit them during their opening hours to purchase paint.

They are based at Prosperity Paint Place, 84-86 Stennack Road, Holmbush, St Austell, Cornwall, PL25 3JQ and are open Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 10 am – 6 pm, and Thursday: 10 am – 1 pm.