In this blog We’re going to be covering everything you’ll need to know when approaching painting a room.
Whether you’re going to be painting a newly plastered wall or one that has been previously painted, it’s important to prepare your surfaces.
If your wall has been painted prior to this point it’s important to make sure it’s free from any grease or grime that may have built up over time.
Kitchen walls are especially likely to hold on to grease due to cooking fumes and vapours so you’ll need to give them a good clean before applying any new paint.
This is easily done with some warm water and a good quality sugar soap.
With newly plastered walls, you’re going to want to make sure that the paint has something to grab on to. An experienced plasterer will hopefully have left you with a wonderful smooth finish to your newly plastered wall and while this is great for papering, it does mean that you may find yourself needing to add some very light abrasion prior to applying your first coat of paint directly to it.
A quick rub with some high grit sandpaper will be sufficient to allow your primary coat of paint to adhere.
The next thing to consider is that your first paint coat will need diluting.
This is simply to allow it to easily penetrate the plaster and create a kind of bond. About 5% dilution with cold water should be fine.
If you are planning to use a paint roller to paint your room, you’re still going to need a good quality paintbrush for cutting in around door frames and skirting boards. You may also want to use a low-tac masking tape to mask off these areas if you are not planning to paint them once the walls are done.
One mistake that a lot of people make when using a paint roller is to apply the paint from the roller to the wall in a simple up and down motion, moving from left to right or vice-versa.
By doing this, the paint is going to lose its consistency as you move across the wall.
It’s much more effective to apply the paint by first rolling up, then down on a diagonal, and then up and back across. A bit like painting the letter N and from that the letter X.
For many people, using a paint roller and brush is going to be the go-to method.
But another option is to use an electric paint sprayer.
Once a technique reserved for professionals, the use of an electric paint sprayer is now much more common amongst DIY’ers due to the accessibility of products available from companies like Wagner and others.
Something to consider when using a paint sprayer is that your paint will need to be thinned out before use.
This point was demonstrated perfectly for us as we used Frenchic’s chalk wall paint. The incredible quality of this paint means it goes on beautifully thick with very few applications, so we needed to dilute it by around 10% with some cold water before applying with an electric paint sprayer.
One of the attributes of an electric paint sprayer is the ability to adjust the width of the spray. This comes in very handy when it comes to dealing with more narrow areas as well as wider spaces to be painted.
Testing out the sprayer on a piece of old cardboard is a good idea before spraying your prepped wall areas.
Remember when using an electric paint sprayer that it’s advisable to invest in some PPE in the form of a dust mask and a pair of safety glasses.
With our first coat applied we gave the recommended two hours before applying our second coat.
As before, when using our roller we had no need to dilute the paint due to the high quality of all the paints in the Frenchic range.
Use your brush again to cut in around the skirting boards and door architrave before switching to your roller. Repeating the technique mentioned earlier to ensure a beautiful even coverage.
We and our partners at Frenchic paints have produced a video going through all the steps when painting a room and if you’d like to learn more you can simply click on the link below.
You may also enjoy browsing the incredible range of chalk wall paints on Frenchic’s website to which you can find a link below.
