Dulux PaintPod Review

This weekend I had a lot of wall and ceiling to paint. And the local DIY chain had an offer on the Dulux PaintPod. So, of course, I bought one. It has buttons and lights, and motors. How could I resist? The idea is that a little pump in the paint reservoir pushes the paint through a pipe to the handle, where it is transferred onto the paint roller. Then, when you have finished painting, you add some cleaning water, the process goes into reverse and the machine cleans itself and the roller.

And it mostly works. The best bit was when it was pumping the first bit of paint through the clear pipe up to the roller, I loved watching the paint travel down the clear plastic tube. I think this is where the BBC 3 people got the idea for their new logo. Once the paint gets to the handle it is then supposed to be magically transferred onto the roller and then you can paint with it.  This is where it gets a bit sticky. Put too much paint on the roller and you end up wearing it. Put too little on and you are just pushing a roller up and down a wall for no reason. If you are painting onto the same colour (as I was for the ceiling) it seemed to work fine, mainly because there wasn’t much to do. The cleaning process mostly worked too, with the bulk of the paint being removed automatically.

Life got harder when I was painting a different colour. Getting enough paint onto the wall was really tricky, and although I could paint a lot faster without having to pause and refill the roller and tray, I think it took me one more coat than I would have needed by hand. In fact, for the final coat I went back to a hand roller.

I don’t think I’d recommend one if you are planning changing the colour of your room. If you have a lot of one colour you want to refresh it might be a good idea, but I must admit I think I got on better with the old familiar roller and tray.