A range of new experimental techniques is developed to quantify drying-air induced disturbances on low viscosity single and multi-layer coating systems. Experiments on prototype slide-bead coating systems show that the surface disturbances take the form of a wavelike pattern and quantify precisely how its amplitude increases rapidly with wet thickness and decreases with viscosity. Heat transfer measurements show that the redistribution of water to form an additional lower viscosity carrier layer while increasing the solids concentration of the upper layer or layers enables the maximum drying rate, for which drying-air induced surface disturbances are acceptably small, to be increased with significant commercial benefits. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.