Interior home painting may seem pretty straightforward. Just dip a paintbrush in a can of paint and start painting your wall. But, anyone who’s done this task knows that it isn’t as easy as it looks. It requires adequate precision, planning, and preparation. These five interior painting tips will help you improve your painting skills and save you money and time in the process.
Interior Painting Tips: Clean the Surface
Use a tack cloth to clean the walls you want to paint for a flawless finish. Remove all grease, dust, and other debris stuck on your surface. If you don’t have a tack cloth, you can opt for a damp piece of clean cloth but squeeze out all the excess water beforehand.
Turn on all the lights and inspect the areas on your wall with peeling paint, dents, and nail holes and mark them with a piece of tape. Fill the small holes and cracks using a drywall compound and use a joint compound to fill the larger holes.
Use High-Quality Brushes, Paint, and Roller Covers
Another essential interior painting tip is using high-quality products to paint. Cheap and low-quality brushes and paint leave blotchy and uneven brush marks. Good brushes, paint, and roller covers provide excellent coverage, so you don’t have to waste time on re-application. It’s always worthwhile to pay a little extra money for quality tools since, in the end, you’ll have a better and more long-lasting finish.
Interior Painting Tips for Mixing Paint
If you’re painting a large space, estimate how much paint you’ll need and buy it all at once. Then, instead of using one gallon of paint at a time, pour all of it into a single large container and stir thoroughly. You can use a modified stirrer or a wooden stick to mix the paint. This process is known as “boxing” the paint, and it helps you maintain consistent color from beginning to end.
Interior Painting Tips to Prevent Overlap Marks
Paint dries quickly. When the edge starts drying before it’s painted over, it can lead to unwanted texture and roller lap marks on the wall. To avoid them, always maintain a wet edge when painting by overlapping the areas you painted before your paint dries.
Don’t Clean Your Brushes or Rollers
There’s no need to wash your brushes or rollers if you don’t manage to complete the project in one day. Simply wrap the brushes and rollers in tin foil or plastic bags and place them in the refrigerator. Cold temperatures prevent latex paint from hardening quickly. However, let them warm up once you take them out of the fridge before using them.
Incorporate the above interior painting tips into your next paint job and make the job faster, smoother and cleaner with a more attractive finish.
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