When painting the inside of my house how can I reduce drops/smudges on the wall?
I am doing some painting and want it to look as clean as possible.
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Answers ( 1 )
Several different things contribute to the success of painting walls.
Prep
I’m going to assume that you have taken care of surface prep - removing flaking paint, filling holes, patching, skim coating, sanding, cleaning and degreasing, then using a primer over repairs or existing high gloss paint. The best paint job in the world isn’t going to make flaws in the wall‘s surface vanish, although highly textured decorative painting techniques like rag rolling or sponging can conceal a certain amount of surface flaws.
Protecting the floor, any furniture remaining in the room, and taping correctly makes a big difference. Spending extra on blue or green painter’s tape is worth the expense over using generic tab masking tape. It is harder to pay attention to your paint application if you are constantly worried about a mess.
Technique
Using a small container when painting with a brush helps avoid overloading the brush with paint which will cause a thick, stacked line.
Tapping the brush on the side of the container to remove excess paint is better than scraping it over the edge, which causes the paint to sit unevenly in the brush.
Rollers waste more paint than brushes and frequently fling small specks of paint around, but are much faster in applying paint. When time and circumstances permit, I will paint a room with brushes. Often this can not be done other than for cutting in edges and trim work. Even when I use a roller, I bring the brush painted area out fairly far from the trim.
Roll your roller cover back and forth over the lines in the paint pan to load the cover evenly with paint, don’t just give it a light pass. Roller covers that are too heavily loaded with paint will leave thick, streaked lines and cause drips on the wall.
Roll back over thick lines on the wall while they are wet in order to smooth the paint and make it uniform. Keep a brush or a damp cotton rag handy to smooth down blobs of paint that fly off to the side.
Steady As She Goes
Marks in paint often occur when new paint is applied over paint that is partially dried and either lifts it away or creates a very thick spot. Don’t jump around or go back over applied paint with a brush or roller, smooth it even and cover missed spots immediately.
Start at one end of the wall and work your way across it. The trick is to so apply paint to the lower part of the wall before the wet edge of the upper part has started to dry. You have to work methodically while constantly checking for thick or missed spots and fixing them quickly before moving on.
As you paint, it helps to have an extra light or two handy to throw light on the wall at a skewed angle. I like to use a work light clipped on the top of old chair or a step stool. Move the light around and keep stopping briefly to sight along the wall to spot thick or thin areas.
Resist the temptation to try to fix something after the paint has started thickening on the wall. Take care of it later after the paint has dried completely if you don’t manage to get it immediately.
It is nice when you can paint a wall in one pass, but preventing thick blobs and drips may result in thin areas of paint that need to be gone over after the wall has completely dried. The more experience you have plus using a decent quality paint and tools can help, but there is a trade off. A heavier application reduces the chances of thin areas, but increases the chance of smudges and streaks.
Additives
Paints are complex coatings and characteristics such as flow, viscosity, open time and coverage can be interconnected. In the past people would use a bit of water (or white spirits for oil based paint) to fight the tendency of their paint to thicken too quickly as they worked, but today we have a variety of paint conditioner products to enhance flow. Follow the manufacturer’s direction carefully and mix the paint conditioner into the paint thoroughly. Too much will result in thin, spotty application.
If the paint begins to drag over time instead of keeping a wet edge that allows you to even out the application, mix in more conditioner, but be careful to avoid overdoing it.