Get to know Resene’s clear finishes

While you most likely picture vibrant hues and luxurious, creamy paint textures when you envisage Resene paint, there is actually an enormous variety of decorating products available, including a comprehensive range of clear finishes. These are designed to protect and enhance the look and finish of timber and plywood, as well as cementitious surfaces like plaster and ground concrete. Additionally, Resene makes clear finishes designed to protect and add function to the finishes you apply.

As every material comes with different properties, uses and demands, each requires different coatings to keep it looking and functioning at its best. Resene is about to enter its 80th year designing and manufacturing paints, stains and clear finishes for New Zealand. Many of these are unique and highly innovative, and have a myriad of practical uses around our homes and commercial premises.

Read on to find out a bit more about Resene’s innovative clear coatings.

Resene Clearcote UVS

This clever product is designed to help combat the effects New Zealand’s very high UV levels have on paint finishes. UV light attacks paint finishes in the same way it attacks our skin – this is the reason why we have some of the highest levels of skin cancer.

Resene Clearcote UVS is designed to be applied by brush or roller over exterior paints. It is great over bright and strong colours, which can also be more sensitive to UV light, especially brightly coloured details like the red finial in the image below, which is also hard to access to recoat! Additionally, Resene Clearcoat UVS is acid and alkali resistant, inhibiting mould growth, and is an Eco Choice-approved product, reflecting its environmentally friendly formulation.

Resene Aquaclear

Interior timber feature walls, panelling (often constructed using plywoods), doors and timber accents have become popular in our homes – think the rise of the Scandi aesthetic – but if they’re left uncoated, the timber is prone to wear and tear, dust and contaminants that can be tricky to remove down the track. To ensure the aesthetics and beauty of the timber are maintained and enhanced, apply Resene Aquaclear.

Depending on the look and style you want to achieve, Resene Aquaclear is available in four gloss levels: Satin, Semi-Gloss, High Gloss and Natural. Resene Aquaclear Satin is by far the most popular, however, the recently introduced Resene Aquaclear Natural is challenging its dominance. Resene Aquaclear Natural is a dead flat clear finish designed to showcase the natural appearance of timber and plywood while providing protection and ease of cleaning. It is stunning when used on plywood coloured with Resene Colorwood Whitewash / Greywash.

If you’re after a touch of colour, you can mix in Resene Colour Enhance, which comes in six colours. Resene Colour Enhance is a useful alternative to stripping and re-staining sun-damaged and washed out interior timbers.

Finial painted in Resene Dynamite and sealed with Resene ClearCote UVS, trims in Resene Sea Fog and weatherboards in Resene Half Taupe Grey.

This timber panel is being coated in Resene Aquaclear satin tinted with Resene Colour Enhance Japan Black.

Resene Qristal Clear

Resene Qristal Clear is an interior solventborne polyurethane that has good all-round durability and is ideal for coating furniture, joinery and panelling. It gives a yellow tone to timber and is best suited to timbers with a yellow, orange or red undertone, such as cedar, rimu, kauri and jarrah.

Resene Qristal Clear Poly-Flat produces a low sheen wax-like finish with excellent grain filling and sanding properties, Resene Qristal Clear Poly-Satin produces a rich hard-wearing semi-gloss finish with excellent sanding properties, and Resene Qristal Clear Poly-Gloss dries to an extremely hard high-gloss finish and is best applied over Resene Qristal Clear Poly-Flat or Resene Qristal Clear Poly-Satin.

The Resene Qristal Clear range of finishes includes waterborne timber floor finishes, ideal for hardwood and engineered timber floors, cork and parquet. Reseen Qristal ClearFloor is available in single pack (Resene Qristal ClearFloor 1K) and two pack (Resene Qristal ClearFloor 2K) which is more hard-wearing.

Resene Concrete Clear

Resene Concrete Clear waterborne coating gives concrete and brick surfaces a polished, easy-to-clean finish. It comes in flat, satin or gloss finishes, depending on the look you’re after, and can be tinted with Resene ConcreteWash colours.

Bear in mind, there are some rules around applying clear finishes to concrete. A gloss finish should always be used as the first coat – it’s also usually thinned down, which helps with penetration and adhesion. The reason gloss is recommended first is that it doesn’t have the flattening agents that lower sheen levels have. These flattening agents don’t penetrate well and end up sitting on the surface of the concrete in a big clump, making the finish appear ‘milky’. As the gloss finish doesn’t contain these agents, using it first penetrates the concrete and fills most of the porosity. Then, subsequent coats of satin or flat containing the flattening agents, can be applied to the surface without altering the clear look.

Resene Qristal ClearFloor 1K was chosen as a protective topcoat for these cork floor tiles, which were hand-painted with a geometric pattern in Resene Colorwood in Resene Becalm and Resene Rising Tide.

This handy weekly wall planner was created by masking out sections and painting them with testpots of Resene Anglaise, Resene First Light, Resene Half Secrets, Resene Moon GLow, Resene Surf Crest, Resene Travertine and Resene Willowbrook, then topcoating with Resene FX Write-on Wall Paint. Wall painted in Resene Pale Leaf.

Resene FX Write-on Wall Paint

Perfect for offices, kids’ bedrooms and busy households, the innovative Resene FX Write-on Wall Paint can be applied over any painted surface to create a whiteboard-like surface. Once the two-part product is dried and cured, you can use whiteboard markers to write on the wall, then simply wipe it off when you’re finished. You can apply it over your existing paintwork, or mark out an area to apply a new Resene paint colour before topcoating with Resene FX Write-on Wall Paint.

Want to see this product in action? The Upcycler Jacob Leaf shows you how to use Resene FX Write-on Wall Paint to create a weekly planner on your home office wall.

Resene Walk-on Concrete Clear Wet Look

While it is often overlooked, solvent-based Resene Walk-on Concrete Clear Wet Look can enhance the natural look of surfaces like brick, cobblestones, concrete, driveways, light industrial floors, paths, patios, steps and swimming pool surrounds.

Resene Aquapel

An ingenious waterborne water repellent was developed to improve the water resistance of cementitious surfaces, including concrete blocks, brickwork, plaster and fibre cement, concrete and terracotta. The beauty of Resene Aquapel is that when you apply it according to the instructions, water will bead and run off the finished surface, reducing water ingress and resisting dampness. As a result, moss and mould are less likely to take hold in the future.

Check out this video shoning Resene Aquapel in action.

Before

After

After being treated with Resene Moss & Mould Killer and rinsed clean, this brick wall got coating of Resene Aquapel which will make water will bead off in the future and prevent more mould from forming.