Secondcoat is a work notebook, not a paint shop. Every entry records one job that was actually done — a hallway, a kitchen wall behind a hob, a bedroom that had been four shades of off-white — and writes down the things that are expensive to get wrong.
What goes into an entry
A wall project carries the substrate, the prep sequence, the sheen and its gloss unit, the number of coats, the touch-dry time, the recoat window, the VOC load of the tin and the full cure time. A colour note carries the hex, the undertone and the LRV, plus what the colour pairs with and what it does at night. A prep guide is organised by substrate and gives each step a condition you can actually test — a palm across a board joint, a torch held at 15 degrees along the wall.
LRV figures on this site are computed from the sRGB values of the colour, not copied from a fan deck. Two tins with the same name can differ by several points, so treat the number as a way to compare colours with each other rather than as a specification.
What this site is not
It is not a substitute for the tin. Always read the manufacturer's data sheet for the product you actually buy, and follow it where it disagrees with anything here. Nothing on this site is a specification for your building, a safety assessment, or a quote.
Older paint can contain lead. If a surface was decorated before the 1980s, test before you sand, burn or dry-scrape it, and dispose of the waste according to your local rules.
How the schedule works
Entries are written in advance and released a few at a time rather than all at once, so the notebook grows at the pace the work happens. Anything not yet released has no page and does not appear in the listings or the sitemap; it shows up on its date.
Who writes it
Secondcoat is run by one person who paints and writes up the jobs afterwards. Corrections are welcome, and so are the details of jobs that went wrong — write to [email protected].