Painting Your Walls Like the Pros

​Looking to do it yourself and paint a room? Here’s how to paint your walls like an absolute pro. For beginners in refurbing a home or starting out in the construction game this can be the best place to start for many reasons. When mistakes are made, they are relatively easy to remedy in comparison to other more intensive projects that involve foundation, roofing, or the structure of a home. However, keeping all that in mind you will still want to be wise in your execution of any painting job and make sure to not be hasty when going about it.
 
Your initial first step is to plan how you will go about painting. Decide how you will tackle the task including where you will start and where you will finish. Don’t limit yourself in what you can accomplish right away and it’s better to be imaginative than boring in the process. Consider when choosing color what the other components of the room are and how your color selection can play nicely with them and off them. Make sure not to forget about the ceiling and its potential need for a little upkeep. Picking the color is an important next step in the preparation process and is one you won’t want to be flippant with. What kind of characteristics do you desire with your color? This can be an excellent place to start. Colors range from warm to cool and ones that are more subdued or colors that pop.  Test a few samples at different times of the day to get a feel on how they may look.
 
The next step in your do it yourself process is to get the proper tools and materials for the job. Some of the necessary tools include paintbrushes, drop cloths, paint, paint trays, rags, putty knife, sandpaper, and paint rollers. Calculate the amount of paint you need. You won’t want to run out of paint and you don’t want to be left with a silly excess. The general rule when trying to find the right amount of paint is to use 1 gallon for 400 square feet of painting surface. That is a simple estimate for the process, but you can be certainly more precise than that. There are many paint calculators such as one provided by Pratt & Lambert that look at non-painting surface for the room like doors and windows.
 
Transitioning from a dark color to a light will require more paint, conversely to the other way around. Deep color bases have the needed for more coats of paint and this requires more paint to be prepared overall. Get yourself a gray tinted primer to lower the number of coats necessary for deeper and more saturated colors. Surfaces with more textures compared to smoother walls will also require more paint per square foot. Get 10% more paint than the regular budget for these unique surfaces.
 
Get the room prepped and ready for your painting job by removing furniture that could get paint on it. Depending on your home’s capacity you may need to push the furniture to the center of the room. Cover furniture and flooring with a drop cloth to keep paint that so easily splatters off it. Check out our next article including the next 5 steps for painting your walls like a pro. Thank you to Lindsey Mather and her article “How to Paint a Room: 10 Steps to Painting Walls Like a DIY Pro”.