Painting the interior of your home can sometimes produce unforeseen challenges, especially if you’re a beginner. The best way to ensure a great finished product is to educate yourself on some of the top painting tips and tricks. For this month’s blog, we will be diving into some of our best tips for painting to help you save time, money, and stress on your next painting project.
Use A Large Bucket
If using a paint that is mixed with color, sometimes the color of paint can slightly vary from can to can. This can cause parts of your room to have an inconsistent shade. The best way to avoid this is to combine the amount of paint you will need in a bucket and lightly mix. This way you’ll have one consistent color! Additionally, you can buy paint in bulk. Activa Coating offers our clear and white paint in 5-gallon cans to avoid having to combine multiple 1-gallon cans into a bucket. Although, we do not sell our colors in 5-gallon buckets; therefore, combining our color paints into a larger bucket (if purchasing multiple) is perfect. When the amount of paint needed is unknown, use more rather than less. You can always put some back in the cans and seal them up for later.
Paint the Trim First
When it comes to professional painters, they always have an order in which they paint. First, they paint the trim, then the ceiling, and lastly the walls. This is because it’s faster and easier to tape off the trim rather than the walls. Remember, painting the trim doesn’t have to be perfect. You want to have a smooth finish on the wood and wait for 24 hours before taking the tape off. If you’re not painting your trim, start with the ceiling first and then the walls.
Clean Surfaces Before Painting
Before starting a new painting job, it is important to disinfect and clean all surfaces of dirt, oil, and other grime. When paint is applied to a dirty surface it has the tendency to chip/peel off much easier. This is because the paint does not properly adhere to the surface, which can ultimately affect your entire project and cost you unneeded money and time. Using a soft cloth and bucket with warm water and soap should be perfect to clean your walls. Dish soap is perfect to use. You’ll want about one ounce of soap for a gallon of warm water.
Use Cotton or Canvas
No matter how good you are at painting you will always have spills and splattered messes. Trying to clean this up after can be a huge hassle, unless you plan for it! All you need is a canvas or cotton drop cloth. Many people use plastic instead of cloth and this is a bad idea. Not only does plastic require tape to stay in place but it also proves to be slippery and harder to clean up. For the best cleanup results, use a canvas or cotton drop cloth or old sheets and towels.
Sand the Trim
If you’re looking for how the pros make the trim extremely smooth, sanding is their secret. After the first couple of coats, you can lightly sand the trim. This allows for a smooth and even finish, eliminating the notoriously bad grainy texture. If you decide to do this, after each sanding make sure to vacuum and wipe down the sanded area with a cloth and warm, soapy water. This will clean up any residual dust in the area, making it clean and smooth for your next coat. Forgetting to clean up after sanding will cause issues in paint adherence and smoothness.
Two Coats (or less)
Activa Coating is the perfect paint for your next indoor painting project. Some other paints or painting projects can take several coats to get the finished product you desire. With Activa, one or two coats is perfect. Activa has an easy application process, meaning that only one to two coats are needed and can be applied with any painting tool including brush, roller, and spray gun.
Conclusion
Painting the interior of your home can come with many unforeseen challenges and surprises, especially if you are a beginner. With these quick and easy to remember tips, you will have the right knowledge to absolutely crush your next paint job! Remember, Activa Coating can be the perfect paint for your next remodel. With our photocatalysis technology, Activa is the perfect eco-friendly, self-cleaning, pollution-reducing paint.
