Best Basement Wall Paint

LESLIE: Linda in Rhode Island, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?

LINDA: Yes. This is an old house and in the basement – on the wall, which was fieldstone – in the past, they had painted it with whitewash or – that’s what it was called back then.

TOM: Right.

LINDA: And no matter what kind of paint I’ve applied, if flakes off.

TOM: Hmm. Yeah, because it’s damp and wet, that’s why. Yeah. You know, you can’t just – if you put any kind of regular paint on that, it’s going to do that. You have to use a basement wall paint. It’s a lot stickier and it can handle the dampness of that wall.

Now, you could also take steps to reduce the dampness by improving your drainage outside. But if you put typical wall paint on the stone, it is going to flake off because water and paint don’t go well together. And those stones are like little sponges and the paint’s just going to peel right off of it.

So, what you want to use is a basement wall paint. And it’s really smelly but it’s really sticky.