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I like to buy from brick and mortar stores which gives me a choice of 3 in my area for spray paint, B and Q, GW or halfords.

I need some white spray paint so have a choice of 3, GW skull white, plastikote white or halfords white primer.

Has anyone any experience of either and can recommend one?

My experience with white and grey spray can primer hasn't been good. They are more reliant on optimum temperature, humidity and spray distance. Where you can spray black and get a good result unless you really mess up, white is tricky. As a workaround, I just prime black and and slap on a base coat of medium or light grey. Since I do both the priming as well as the base coat with an airbrush, it goes very quickly.

Because white is tricky, if you have to use a can, I'd go with the GW one since you'll find more relevant information for our use on those (including on the can!).

I too have had mixed experiences with white spray paint. Its either too thick, or doesn't apply properly and results in a "bumpy" base coat. Always had good luck with greys, however. What I would recommend is a cheap airbrush for basecoating. All the money you'll spend on spraypaint over time, and the various colors for different projects it might end up coming out cheaper in the long run.

Thanks for the advice, an airbrush is an investment step too far for me at the moment.

I tend to use army painter red to base my models. The white immediately I want to use to put arrows on the top of my rhinos (I think it'll give a better finish than brush).

I am planning a couple apocathrys in the future so I would rather something that can be used for that in the future.

Well if its just for that, if you mask well enough that you don't get overspray, just about any spray paint will work. Me personally, I would go to any hardware store and just get any spray can of white paint. This is okay since you don't have any details(for the most part) and are painting on a flat surface.

My story is no different. White spray primers are hit or miss. The only thing I've found that is consistent and good is the Vallejo White Surface Primer applied with an airbrush.

If you are going to start using an airbrush, then you will probably want to investigate using water based primers such as Vallejo rather than the canned ones. This will let you avoid spraying outdoors and avoid any temperature or humidity issues. A small paint booth to filter overspray can be purchased for not that much off of eBay. Personally, I avoid GW primers because they are really too expensive for what you get and tend to react badly with some paint strippers.* They are not worth the hassle. As for color, it never hurts to have the three main colors: black, grey and white. Which you use is dependent upon the base color of paint job. Bright colors get white, neutral colors get gray and dark colors get black, but you are probably better off using grey there as well. I think grey primer with black pre-shading (something made easy with an airbrush) is superior to black primer as a whole.**

*Different paint brands are going to react differently to different airbrush cleaners too. Some paints will turn into rubbery, stringy strands when mixed with an incompatible cleaner and they will do an excellent job at fouling an airbrush. It is something you will need to make note of as you pick up skill in using an airbrush.

**If you are a person that fully assembles their miniatures before painting them, then black primer is much more useful as its makes those hard to reach areas that you can't paint look lost in shadow.

I had reasonable success with Floquil white and have heard good things about Army Painter white. The Floquil can be runny in my experience, and smells like hell until you get some acrylic on top of it, but it does a pretty good job.

It's also true that climate can affect white a little more as it's so finnicky. If I were to buy another can of white it would be Army Painter, and if I couldn't get ahold of that locally, Floquil.