INSL-X Waterborne, Semi-Gloss Acrylic Pool Paint, Ocean Blue, 1 Gallon

I did a complete pool overhaul on our 30+ year old in-ground concrete pool. As you can see in the pictures, it was in pretty rough shape! I was quoted $12k-15k for a new plaster job, which is not in our budget! So, I decided to paint it. This was my first time painting a pool, and this is my story.We live on the Georgia coast, right at sea level, so our first step before completely draining our pool was to locate the well point. If you live in an area with a high water table, contact the company that installed your in-ground pool and ask them if they installed a well point on your pool and, if so, where is it located. Any pool company worth its weight will pre-install this well point for your pool when they are constructing the pool itself.I connected our old pool pump / service pump to the well point and kept it running 24/7 while the pool was empty. It had a constant trickle of water, accompanied by large gusts of ground water every ~90 seconds. If you don't do this, you risk your pool floating like a ship!Once the pool was drained and pressure washed thoroughly, I rinsed it with muriatic acid, followed by TSP and lots of water. I found several de-laminated spots in the plaster where it was just crumbling or bubbling and coming off in sheets; all of that plaster had to be chipped up and removed to provide a sound surface. We removed a lot of the plaster on the bottom and patched the spots where exposed concrete was visible with a polymer-modified porcelain tile thinset. The rest we just left alone. Once all of the holes were patched, we swept the pool and prepped it for paint.The paint instructions say to apply the paint to a dry surface, so we let our pool dry in the Georgia sun for 2 days straight before painting. We checked the weather forecast to make sure we had at least 3-7 days of weather with no rain. I found that the instructions were correct on this; our paint adhesion got better and better with each passing day.We applied the first coat and let it dry for 4 hours. And despite the paint instructions to NOT apply paint in direct sunlight, we did anyway. It was extremely hot in the Georgia sun, but the paint still went on good and dried good. We applied the second coat -- which by the way goes on easier than the first coat -- and then cleaned up and called it a day. I then carefully pealed up the Frog painters tape off of the tile line. I noticed that the paint acted like it would easily peel off of the pool surface at this point -- like a cheap latex paint -- but I convinced myself that it just needed a lot of "cure time" to adhere to the concrete correctly. And this was correct! After 7 days of curing in the sun, the spots where I thought it would peel was now stuck on like glue and not going anywhere! Also, the 7 days also allowed for the globs of paint that dripped off of the rollers, that I never noticed or would have cleaned up!So long story short, this paint is excellent and I would definitely recommend it and buy it again. Just make sure you do your prep-work and follow up with care and it will look great.For our 18' x 36' pool (roughly 25k gallons), we used 8.5 gallons of "Ocean Blue" waterborne paint to two-coat it. With all supplies (Pool paint, Tiles, thinset, grout, etc.), we probably spent $2k total.INSL-X WR102309A-01 Waterborne, Semi-Gloss Pool Paint, 1 Gallon, Ocean Blue

I was pleased to see on the can that this pool paint is manufactured by Benjamin Moore and I know a painter who swears by that brand. But, I'm more impressed with how smooth this paint rolled onto my concrete pool wall and how far it went. It took only a little more than half the paint that's been required in the past and it covered better too. The other brands of acrylic pool paints I've used before called for about a 3 day cure time before refilling, but this INSL-X paint says a minimum of 7 days cure time under ideal conditions, which leads me to think that something must be different about the formulation. The royal blue looks very nice and I'm glad I chose it over the lighter blue because fading is inevitable over time anyway. Based on my initial experience in applying this paint, I'm hopeful that it will be more durable than what I've used in the past, but I'll update this review if I have any problems with it over the summer. Thanks and good luck!

We have to paint our pool every few years and I've used white in the past. White is great because it allows the natural blue of the water to shine through and ultimately ends up being a gorgeous a turquoise just by itself. But this time around we wanted to try something different, something darker, so we chose the Royal Blue from INSL-X. I would've been happy finding a true cobalt blue, but it doesn't seem to exist. All I can say is WOW! that is some kind of intense color!I can only give four stars regarding durability because it's too early to tell. We did the preparation correctly, removing as much of the prior pain as we could with a high powered pressure washer. You can never get it all but we did our best. What you see in the photos is a lot of its original white Gunite color, so we got about 70 to 80% of the original paint off. The INSL-X rolled on smooth. We laid down the first coat nice and thick, and the second coat glided right over it. We gave 24 hours in between coats. Thank goodness, we are not expecting any rain for four or five more days so that will give it a good opportunity to cure. Here in Florida, you never know when it's going to rain and I thought I'd take advantage of this drought we are having to gett this project accomplished. I'm glad we did. Even though I would have liked this blue to be just a little bit darker, I am still thrilled with it!