4 Helpful Tips For Painting a Room

One of the easiest ways to customize a room inside a home is by painting the walls in a fun or stylish color. Homeowners can easily hire someone to come to the home and do the painting for them, but for homeowners who want to break into DIY, painting is the perfect place to start. 

Remove All Furniture From the Room

The first step to painting a room is to protect everything in it from the paint, and the easiest way to do that is to take it out of the room. If the furniture is too big or too heavy to be taken out completely, then the homeowner should pull it away from the wall and place it in the center of the room. Optionally, they can also cover it with a tarp to ensure that it’s protected from any stray splatters of paint.

Use Painter’s Tape

Painter’s tape is similar to masking tape, but it’s specially formulated for use on walls and with paint. This tape is a great tool for all painters— whether they’re painting their first room or their one-hundredth room. The tape prevents wet paint from seeping beneath it, which means it leaves clean, crisp lines behind  after it’s removed. Painter's tape is especially useful if the homeowner wants to do any sort of design on the wall, such as stripes, or if they want an accent wall and want to ensure that none of their brightly colored paint gets on the neutral walls.

Clean the Walls Before Starting

While most people don’t think about it very often, walls can actually gather a lot of dust and dirt over time. If the homeowner tries to paint on a wall as-is, the paint may have difficulty sticking to the wall due to that buildup of grime. To clean the walls, the homeowner can first use a vacuum to get rid of any larger debris and things such as cobwebs. Once that’s done, simply use a moist cloth to wipe down the walls to remove everything that has been left behind. Make sure to let the wall dry completely before adding any paint to it.  While cleaning the walls, this is also a good opportunity to remove any light switch or vent covers to protect them from paint.

Cut In Before Using Rollers

It can be exciting to grab a paint roller and start getting paint up on the wall, but for the best results, the homeowner shouldn’t rush in. Instead, the homeowner should first start around the edges of the wall and use a brush to paint a few inches in. By doing this, they create a border to work within, and this makes it easier to use the roller later.  Rollers can be inaccurate, and it can also be easy to make strokes too wide and accidentally get paint on the floor molding or ceiling. Cutting in helps prevent this by creating a space that already has paint.

Painting a room is a simple job that doesn’t take too long to complete. However, if a homeowner has never painted a room before, it can be difficult to know where to start and what the most important things are. Painting is a great way to break into the world of DIY projects, and these tips are essential for anyone who wants to give it a try. Grab a paint brush and some paint, and have fun with it.