House Painting 101: Tips and Tricks to Help You Paint Like a Pro
Skip the big home improvement stores and pay a visit to your local paint store (my local Benjamin Moore dealer is awesome). They’ll give more personalized service and tend to be more knowledgeable than the employees at the big home improvement stores.
Spend the additional money to purchase higher quality paint. Most premium brands will only cost $5 to $10 more per gallon than the “economy” brands – money well spent to achieve better results in fewer coats. Two brands that I’ve had consistent success with are Benjamin Moore and Ralph Lauren. For primer, you can’t beat Muralo or Benjamin Moore.
Don’t forget to ask your friends and family for advice regarding paint brands and colors they’ve tried. I’ve found that most home owners have horror stories to share regarding paint color selection. It’s a lot easier to learn from someone else’s mistakes then to go through the trouble of painting and to have your room end up a ghastly color like highlighter green.
And speaking of highlighter green, don’t rely on a tiny paint swatch to pick your paint color. A two inch paint chip is not going to give you an accurate representation of what the room will look like when painted in that color. I’ve learned this the hard way, after I let my husband pick a shade of pale yellow named “evocative sunlight” solely based on the swatch. Against my better judgment, I even let him go to the paint store unsupervised.
When we opened up the can, the color was much brighter than I expected, but being a novice at painting, I foolishly believed that it would look better on the walls after it dried. We painted well into the night, and when we woke up the next day, there was a neon glow coming from the family room. Somehow, I had failed to notice that “evocative sunlight” had a neon green undertone that reared its ugly head when the entire room was painted.
Never again – too much money spent on the wrong color, and too many blisters from painting multiple coats in that room. My advice – spend $4 and buy a sample size of the color(s) you are considering. The sample will cover a 2 foot by 2 foot square – way more surface area than a tiny paint chip.
Buy a cheap paint brush($0.50) and a poster board ($0.25) from your local craft store, paint your sample on the poster board, and use painter’s tape to stick it up on the wall. Observe the color at all times of the day, on different walls, in natural light and artificial light – you’ll be surprised at how different the same color will look.
Beware of letting the name of the paint color fool you. I stupidly let “Evocative Sunlight” evoke feelings of a warm sunny yellow – big mistake. The names are chosen with one thing in mind -to encourage an emotional response and attachment from the buyer. I’ve since learned then that new colors aren’t magically invented each season by paint manufacturers; rather, they take existing shades and rename them.
What’s old is new again – an orange shade from the ’70s can be reintroduced successfully as “pumpkin latte”. Recently, I considered using a shade called “Bittersweet Chocolate”, only to find that it looked almost pure black on my wall. I ended up achieving a dark chocolate look using a brown that was simply named “Classic Brown”.
For darker shades, especially red, use a primer that has been tinted to match the final color. Grey primers also tend to work well under red shades. Darker paint colors require a lot of colorant, making the paint very thin and transparent. We painted our hallway a deep red and had our local paint dealer tint the primer to match our paint.
The walls actually looked passable after just one coat of red primer. Then we did 2 coats of deep red paint and it looked fabulous, great coverage and no streaks or roller marks. Conversely, my brother-in-law also tried painting their walls red using only white primer. They gave up after 2 streaking coats made it look like they were doing some type of faux sponge treatment!
To achieve professional results, always paint with “wet edges”. Simply put, “cut in” a small area with your paint brush and before the paint dries, roll into the edge with your paint roller to smooth out the brush strokes. You’ll have a seamless transition on all the corners and edges. Make sure you smooth out any excess paint with long even strokes of your roller.
Place brushes and mini rollers in resealable plastic sandwich bags and wrap your paint trays and rollers with plastic wrap to prevent paint from drying up. If you have to take an extended break from painting, or if you want to continue painting the next day but don’t want the hassle of cleaning your brush or having to pour out new paint, just wrap everything in plastic.
When I first started painting my house, I went through countless roller naps, paint trays, and brushes because I wasn’t quick enough to finish the paint job in one day, and I was also too lazy to soak and clean my brushes.
Once your paint tray and roller have dried up overnight, you’re left with no choice but to replace them. Then I thought maybe I can keep the paint wet by removing all the oxygen – that’s where the plastic came in. The sandwich bags don’t even have to be completely sealed up to preserve the paint brush- when you take it out a couple days later, the brush will be as wet as the last time you put it down.
I also wrap the paint tray with the roller in it pretty air tight, and the paint is just as fresh as when I poured it. Fewer trips to the hardware store to buy paint supplies! Please note that while the sandwich bag trick works well for latex paint, brushes used for oil paint may dry up a lot quicker, even encased in a sandwich bag.
I hope that all these tips that I’ve learned from painting my first home will help painting novices paint like professionals!
