Ronseal One Coat Self-Priming Cupboard Paint

Painting kitchen units is normally a three-product job: a specialist adhesion primer to get anything to stick to melamine, then two coats of topcoat over it. Ronseal One Coat Cupboard Paint collapses that into one tin and, on most jobs, one coat.

It's a water-based satin that primes itself. That's the entire point of it. Melamine and factory-finished MDF are smooth, sealed and non-porous, which is exactly why ordinary paint lifts off them at the first knock — this is formulated to key directly to those surfaces without a separate primer underneath.

What it goes on

Melamine and MDF kitchen and bedroom units, plus bare and previously painted wood. Doors, drawer fronts, carcasses, shelving and freestanding furniture.

Practical figures

• Coverage: around 6m² per coat — enough for a small run of units.
• Touch dry: about 1 hour.
• Recoat: 4 hours, if a second coat is needed.
• One coat is usually enough. Going over a bold or dark existing colour is the exception — plan for two.

Why it holds up in a kitchen

Tough, water-resistant and washable once cured, so it survives the daily handling around handles and door edges that finds out a weak finish fast. Being water-based it's low odour and low VOC, which is worth something when you're working in an occupied kitchen. It also won't yellow over time the way a solvent-based enamel does on a white unit.

Satin finish, 0.75 litre. Available in White and Granite Grey.

• Free delivery on orders over €85 (Ireland)
• Orders placed before 12pm ship same day
• Click & collect available at Ballymount, Dublin
• Tinted paint is non-returnable once mixed