Enamel paint is often thought of as hard, glossy, and used in small quantities, sort of like fingernail polish! It is frequently used to add vivid colors and durability to small crafts. Despite this paint’s main purpose for appliance finish touch-ups, though it can be used for more than just small items. If you’re in need of a paint that forms a hard shell and provides reliable protection, enamel just might be the finish for you.

So, What Is Enamel Paint?
Enamel paint is defined more by its qualities than by its content. In the broadest sense, enamel paint means any solvent-based paint that dries to a hard shell. Solvent-based paints are also called oil-based paints, in contrast with water-based paints.

Enamel paint springboards off of its root words “smelt” or “melt,” since true enamel is a glass coating that is melted or kiln-baked at extremely high temperatures onto metal or ceramics. Note, however, that enamel paint bears no similarities with the enamel of molten glass, as there is no glass content in this kind of paint.

In reality, air-dry enamel paints are far softer than true enamels formed in a painter’s kiln. Paint manufacturers have further widened the definition by sometimes attaching the word enamel to water-based paints, thus losing the one ingredient that usually ties together all enamel paints: solvents.

What are Some Examp