# Paint and Primer in one on new drywall



## klaatu (Mar 9, 2015)

Any paint and primer brand specifies two coats on bare drywall. Paint and primer typically is BS, but on bare drywall using two coats of a flat or matte finish it should be fine. If you want to use a higher sheen (eggshell,satin,semigloss) it is usually better (and cheaper) to use a primer first to provide a better seal of the drywall to get a more uniform sheen.


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## Jmayspaint (May 4, 2013)

The ones I've tried (P&P's) have worked fine on new drywall. Two caveats are the drywall needs to be completely dust free to ensure proper adhesion. Drywall primers are better about bonding if slight surface dust is present. With a P&P, any surface dust at all can give you problems. 

Also if the drywall paper is fuzzed up from over sanding, using a primer and sanding the primer coat will generally give you a smoother finish that just using paint. Flat paint still sands pretty well, but paint with any sheen won't sand as well.


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## expertPainter (Sep 15, 2014)

If it's just a few walls it's not the end of the world to not use a proper primer. 

Typically with basements you want to prime. Lots of different moisture contents. Humid/damp in the spring and summer, cold in the winter etc.

On a side note every flat paint or eggshell that I've come across is self priming. The paint and primer in one is just a gimmick that home depot sells. If you put a coat of finish on your walls are you then going to go back and prime? No because it's already primed.


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## ToolSeeker (Sep 19, 2012)

It is not just Home Depot this gimmick has worked so well and so many people have bought into it even the big PAINT companies are using it. Personally I won't trust it. If it was just drywall maybe but the drywall mud on the joints is a different product which can flash, if sanded too aggressively along the edge of said mud the paper gets fuzzy and will show differently. 

Guess I'm just old school but to me at what $19 a gallon primer is cheap insurance.


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## jeffnc (Apr 1, 2011)

I was using SuperPaint (in Flat) from Sherwin Williams without primer on bare drywall before it even said "Paint and Primer" on the label. Frankly, I don't really think the formula changed when they added it to the label. Maybe it did. But that strategy seems to work fine. Personally, I prefer to look at it as "self-priming over drywall", as opposed to being "paint and primer in one". Or to put it another way, with a quality paint with high solids, you don't _really_ need a primer over bare drywall. In Flat. In eggshell, it's more of a crap shoot.


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## klaatu (Mar 9, 2015)

jeffnc said:


> I was using SuperPaint (in Flat) from Sherwin Williams without primer on bare drywall before it even said "Paint and Primer" on the label. Frankly, I don't really think the formula changed when they added it to the label. Maybe it did. But that strategy seems to work fine. Personally, I prefer to look at it as "self-priming over drywall", as opposed to being "paint and primer in one". Or to put it another way, with a quality paint with high solids, you don't _really_ need a primer over bare drywall. In Flat. In eggshell, it's more of a crap shoot.


I don't think the Superpaint formula changed either. It just does what the P&P paints do anyway. At some point, Sw, Ben Moore, Pratt & Lambert, and some of the other paint companies realized that they were losing market share to Behr and Valspar and their paint & primer marketing. I was working at a BM dealer when they started changing their labels to reflect the self priming properties of their paint. They dragged most of their dealers kicking and screaming to the P&P marketing, because most of the BM dealers knew it was BS.

Not to mention the fact that Behr and Valspar and almost everyone else just re-labelled their cans to make their paint P&P in one.


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