Cold weather means that standard waterborne paint can't form a proper film at low temperatures as the acrylic base needs some warmth to make the particles soft enough to stick together.

Unless the paint is based on wintergrade technology, a paint film dried in the cold can crack and even just dry to a powder. There's an intermediate set of temperatures between 5°C to 10°C where the film seems to form okay but looks can be deceptive as the coating is likely to have much poorer than normal durability. The surface temperature may be colder than the ambient air temperature as surfaces take longer to heat than the surrounding air does.

To help keep projects on track through winter, Resene has a range of Wintergrade paints to suit a wide range of projects, so painters can get more work done over the colder months. Wintergrade paints are ideal for a range of exterior projects and large scale interior work under cold conditions.

Hi-Glo is ideally suited for direct application to cementitious surfaces while X-200 shows significant advances in the areas of film build, adhesion, penetration, application and durability, while Sonyx 101 is a waterborne semi-gloss paint typically used on block and brickwork, concrete and fibre cement amongst others.