Calcium is very effective when used in conjunction with cobalt and zirconium. It promotes drying under adverse weather conditions such as low temperature and high humidity. Loss-of-dry problems during long storage times of paints can be reduced using calcium as an auxiliary drier. Calcium drier helps to improve hardness and gloss as well as to reduce skin-formation and silking. Moreover, calcium drier is useful as pigment wetting and dispersing agent.

Cobalt is the most important and most widely used drier metal of all. It is primarily an oxidation catalyst and as such acts as a surface drier.

When used alone, cobalt may have a tendency to cause surface wrinkling and poor through drying. In order to provide uniform drying cobalt is used in combination with other metals like manganese, zirconium, lead, calcium and combination driers based on these metals.

Cobalt has a strong red-violet color, which may affect the color of the liquid paint if used at higher concentrations. However, the color of the dried paint layer is hardly affected.

Manganese is an active drier as well, though less effective than cobalt. As an accelerator of polymerization in baking finishes manganese is more effective than cobalt. Though it is not preferred for use in white paints as it affects the color. While manganese is seldom used alone; cobalt as the primary drier with manganese is a useful modifier.

Lead dryers were the most commonly used in the past, but now have been replaced in most paints by less toxic alternatives.