Painting 101: Five tips before you get started

Painting your walls adds a new fresh feel to the room. It helps you cover up old colors you no longer identify with and it can give the room a whole new feel, even if you don’t change anything else. Here are five tips you need to know before you get started on painting.

1. Pick your colors

The first thing you should do is pick what colors you want for the room. The big thing right now is to go neutral and have an accent wall. An all white room with one pink wall or an all grey room with some kind of pattern on the wall will work very well. Patterned walls are a big hit right now, so you use all kinds of colors and patterns for your accent wall. You may want to get samples of your paint colors and actually put them on the wall, so you can see what the color will look like with the room and lighting.

2. Prep the room

Next, you want to get the room ready for painting. Remove everything from the walls including nails, and pull off all outlet covers from the walls. Clean the walls, and make sure they are dry before you actually paint. All furniture remaining in the room should be pulled away from the walls and covered to prevent drips from damaging it. Part of the prepping process includes putting up all the holes in the wall, so you have a clean slate. The exception would be if you want to reuse the same holes for pictures you are going to put back up. Remove your baseboard heater covers to prevent paint from dripping on them. Then, use tape to block off anything you don’t want to paint such as baseboards, ceiling, etc.

3. Prime the wall

Whether or not you think you need it, primer makes a huge difference in the overall look of your paint job. It is good for helping cover up an old, bold color. Plus, it helps the new paint to stick well, so you don’t have any problems with it flaking off.

4. Use a brush to get the edges

Anywhere you won’t be able to use a roller (such as on the trim), you will need to use a paintbrush. You will want to keep your paintbrush around for possibly fixing anything you missed when the paint job is complete.

5. Get out the roller

Using a roller is pretty easy once you get the hang of it, and it is the fastest and easiest way to get a room painted. Dip the paintbrush and draw a W on the wall. Then, fill in the remaining areas with your roller. The reason you want to do this is because you get a lot of paint on the brush at first, and by painting a W and filling in from there, you are able to spread out the paint more evenly.

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