"Paint" covers half a dozen unrelated products in an Indian paint shop, and buying the wrong one is the most common and most expensive mistake a homeowner makes. This is the plain version: what each type is, what it is actually for, and where it fails.
Primer
Not a finish. Primer is the layer that makes a finish stick to a wall and stops the wall drinking it unevenly. Different primers exist for bare plaster, for old painted surfaces, for metal and for wood, and they are not interchangeable.
Skipping primer to save a day is the single most reliable way to make a good finish fail — see why paint peels. On texture work it matters more, not less: tools and primer.
Whitewash and lime
The oldest option, still used on boundary walls, farm structures and outbuildings. Cheap, breathable, and it chalks — rub a whitewashed wall and it comes off on your hand. That chalking is why nothing bonds reliably over old whitewash without removing it first.
Distemper
An economical interior finish, water-based, matt. Acrylic distemper is a step up from the older oil-bound kind. It is not washable in any meaningful sense and it is not for exteriors.
The practical point: distemper is the surface nothing else sticks to. If your walls are distempered and you want anything else on them — emulsion, texture, waterproof coating — plan on removing it. See applying texture over existing paint.
Emulsion
The default modern wall paint, water-based, sold in interior and exterior grades that are genuinely different products. Interior emulsion has no business on an exterior wall — it has neither the UV resistance nor the rain resistance, and it will fail within a season or two.
Within each grade you will be offered matt, satin and sheen finishes. Higher sheen generally means easier cleaning and more visible wall defects; matt hides defects and marks more easily.
Enamel
Hard, glossy, traditionally solvent-based, used on grilles, gates, doors, windows and metal. Not a wall paint. Its relevance to walls is negative: an enamelled or high-gloss surface is difficult to overcoat, and anything going over it needs abrading and the correct primer.
Texture finishes
A category, not a product — several unrelated things are sold as "texture paint":
- Marble texture / madrasi dana — real graded marble granules in a binder, laid by trowel. The texture is stone you can feel. Full explanation, and why it goes by so many names.
- Sand texture — fine sand or silica in a binder. Even, gritty, no visible grains. A genuinely different finish, often quoted under the same words.
- Putty and roller textures — patterns worked into a thick putty or compound with combs, rollers and stencils. The pattern is tooled, not granular.
These look different, cost different amounts and behave differently. "Texture paint" on a quotation tells you almost nothing — ask which one.
Waterproof coatings
Where most of the confusion in this trade lives. A waterproofing chemical is a barrier product with a job to do; an "exterior emulsion with waterproofing properties" is a paint that resists rain better than an ordinary one. They are not substitutes, and the second will not fix a leak.
We are direct about this because it costs people money: waterproofing chemical vs waterproof paint, and what a waterproofing chemical actually does.
Choosing, in one paragraph
Interior walls that need to look clean and be repainted occasionally: emulsion. Interior wall that should be a feature: texture. Exterior walls: exterior-grade emulsion, or texture where you want the elevation to have material character and a long life. Metal and joinery: enamel. A wall that is leaking or damp: none of the above — find and fix the water first, because every finish on this page will fail over it.