Paint Peeling & Blistering

What causes it

Paint bubbling and flaking off within a year. Repainting over trapped moisture wastes the paint — the moisture must go first.

Paint failing during or after the monsoon is almost never a paint quality problem. It is a moisture problem showing itself at the only place you can see — and repainting without finding the moisture wastes the cost of the paint twice.

• Moisture pushing out from behind — penetrating damp, rising damp or a leak in the wall. The paint film is impermeable, so vapour collects behind it and lifts it off in sheets.
• Hygroscopic salts in the plaster, left behind by water that has since evaporated. These draw moisture from the air and crystallise under the film, pushing it off and leaving a white bloom underneath.
• Painting a wall that had not dried — after a repair, after replastering, or in new construction. Roughly a month per 25 mm of plaster is needed, and this is the single most common cause we see on recently renovated Pune flats.
• Condensation on a cold internal surface, which keeps the film permanently damp and typically brings black mould with it.
• Poor surface preparation — painting over chalky, dusty or previously distempered surfaces, or skipping primer on fresh plaster.
• An alkaline substrate attacking the film where fresh cement render was painted too early.

How we identify the real source

Water travels. The stain on a ceiling is frequently metres from the actual point of entry, which is why we deep-scan the structure before recommending treatment rather than working from the visible damage alone.

How we treat it

Nothing is repainted until the moisture source is identified and corrected, because paint is the last layer, not the repair.

We take moisture readings at surface and at depth to separate condensation from saturation, thermal-image the wall to find the extent and any cold bridging, and inspect the opposite face — a peeling internal wall very often has a defective downpipe, open pointing or a planter bed on the other side of it.

Once the cause is fixed, the wall is prepared honestly. All loose and blown material is scraped back to a sound edge; where salts are present the plaster is hacked off well beyond the visible line and replaced with a salt-resistant renovating render rather than skimmed over. The substrate is then dried to a measured moisture content, not to a date in the programme, and we tell you what that period is before work starts.

Finishing is a masonry primer appropriate to the substrate and its alkalinity, followed by an exterior-grade elastomeric or breathable emulsion depending on whether the wall needs crack-bridging or needs to keep drying outward. On exposed elevations a breathable silane/siloxane repellent from about ₹35 per sq ft can be specified beneath the finish where the masonry is otherwise sound.

Moisture readings are recorded at handover, so if the paint is going on, it is going on a wall we can show is dry.

What it costs

Use the cost calculator for an indicative range, or book a free inspection for a written estimate.