DIY Paint a Room

Want to paint a room by yourself but don't know how? Once you know the basics, DIY painting is fairly simple. Keep reading for preparation tips, when to use tape, how to use brushes and rollers, what type of paint to use, as well as some key painting guidelines.

Preparing to Paint

The first thing to do is clear out the room you are about to paint. This means moving furniture and removing towel racks, shower curtains, and everything else that will be in the way. Also, it is best to take off light switch and outlet covers to ensure you do not accidentally miss any spots. This makes the job easier, and in the end the room looks better.

If for some reason you are short on time, then instead of removing items from the room, just push everything to the middle of the room. Once you have cleared the room, cover the carpet or floor with drop cloths. Also, if you have furniture in the room, cover it with drop cloths.

If you are planning on using a roller to paint, make sure to cover your windows. Otherwise, if paint splatters on the windows, you will have to use a razorblade to scrape the paint off, which will be very time consuming.

Now that you have covered everything in the room that you do not want painted, take a good look at your walls. Before you begin to paint, you want to make sure your walls are even and do not have any holes in them. If there are holes in the walls, fill them with putty and wait for the putty to set. Once it has set, sand the putty down so it is smooth with the wall. Run your hand over the covered area to make sure it is smooth. Sanding is an important step in painting, because if the wall is not smooth, you will end up with lumps when you paint it.

Using Tape

You should tape around counters, bathtubs, and weirdly shaped areas that may be hard to paint around. Also tape around windows. Buy a plastic sheet and tape it along the edges of the window. If you want, you can tape around molding, but that depends on how confident you feel painting around it.

Although there is such thing as painter's tape, many professional painters find it falls off too easily and prefer to use masking tape.

Don't bother taping the corners of rooms. Instead, you can cut it. Cutting means you use an angled brush, and then run it in the other direction. In other words, if you have a 3-inch angled brush, run the ½-inch side along the edge of the wall you want to paint.

Brushes v. Rollers

For beginner painters, 2.5 to 3-inch brushes are ideal. Anything bigger is harder to hold. Angular brushes are the best to buy, since you will need it to cut.

Flat end brushes are not worth buying, since you can't cut with a flat end. Also, you can use rollers for anything you would have used for a flat end brush.

When painting a wall, rollers work better because they maintain the texture of the wall more than brushes. In other words, you can't see brush strokes when using rollers.

However, you cannot paint around edges with a roller, so you do need angular brushes. Always cut first with your angular brush, and then use the roller to paint over what you cut. You want to use your roller as soon as possible (before the paint dries); otherwise you wall will look bad.

If you are painting a door, or anything that is awkward to paint using a regular roller, then you want to use a mini-roller, also known as a sausage roller. These rollers are about 6-inches long. For regular rollers, you generally want to buy ones with a 3/8 to ½-inch nap-the thickness of the roller. However, if you are painting textured walls, use rollers with a ¾-inch nap. Lastly, when you buy a roller, make sure to also buy an extension. This will allow you to roll paint in one stroke from the ceiling to the floor, which will make your paint job look much more even.

Type of Paint

When painting regular surfaces, such as walls, make sure to use eggshell or flat paints. Semi-gloss paints are generally used for kitchens and bathrooms because it is easier to clean, and semi-gloss or high-gloss is used on trim.

With flat paint you can get away with more mistakes, but the higher the glosses, the more noticeable the brush strokes, so you should use either a roller or a mini-roller.

Painting Tips and Conclusions

Whether you are using brushes or rollers, the best way to paint is to paint in long strokes.

If you are using rollers, do not start at the edge where you are painting. For example, if you are painting in a corner of the room, do not simply dip the roller in the paint and start rolling. If you do that, you will get a big glob of paint in the corner of the room, which will look funny when dry. Instead, dab at the paint and roll over it multiple times so that you have an even distribution of paint on your wall.

When painting a wall, start in the middle and work your way to the edges. Paint in a tight zigzag pattern, moving your roller up and down to work your way across the room.

Do not wait too long to rewet your roller because otherwise it will pull paint off the wall, and your wall will be painted unevenly.

Paint usually takes a day to dry, depending on humidity.

Never paint outside if it's going to rain; it'll wreck it.

Now you know everything about painting a room yourself. Take your time painting, follow this article's guidelines, and soon you'll have a beautifully painted room.