How To Paint A Room

I'm sure that many of you have painted before, but I'm guessing that some of you haven't, and that's why you're here to learn how to do it right. So our friendly Calgary Painters going to give you some pro tips. I'm going to give some tips for beginners and walk you through every step of the process as simply as possible so that when you're done you love your new space. Here's a how to paint a room guide that should work for you. This how to paint a room - painting tips blog post will also help you lay it down.

As you can tell, we're all prepped to paint in this bedroom and if you haven't checked out my how to prep a room for painting blog post, you might want to check it out right here. Prep is a step that's often overlooked but it's super important that our holes are patched and our trim is taped, our floors are protected. Our Calgary painters try to find, patch, and repair all surface imperfections for free.

This room is ready to go and for this project I'm going to be painting the walls and the trim so let's start off by telling you how to choose a paint color and sheen. I always recommend going to a local paint store or hardware store near you and grabbing a bunch of swatches in a color you like and bringing them home with you to see them in your actual space. 

They're going to look different than they do in the store because of the lighting conditions in your room will be different. I like to take them to the wall with painters tape and leave them there for a few days before I start the project so I can see the colors at all different times of day with all different lighting. 

Once I choose my favorite color I also grab a couple swatches that are a few shades lighter and a few shades darker if I want to go a little darker or a little bit lighter. I already have options that are in the same color family for this room I chose valspar's juniper breeze. It's a green color but it isn't overly warm or too greeny and actually almost reads like a green gray. 

And I want the trim to look super clean and crisp so I'm going with valspar's ultra white for the trim. Okay so we have your paint color now for the sheen for our purposes in this room we're going to be using a flat finish for the walls this is awesome for a beginner painter because hides a lot of imperfections.

Then we're going to be using a semi-gloss for all the trim this is kind of a go-to for any window, casings, doors, and trim because it's super washable and it's also going to be more reflective because of the higher gloss so it draws your eye to it making your paint job look awesome. 

So I picked my paint color, I figured out my sheens, and now I need to determine how much paint I need for this room. The average gallon of paint will cover about 400 square feet of wall space, so we got to do a little math to figure out how much wall space I have. Okay so my friend Calgary Painters is a painter, and they are helping me figure out exactly what the square footage of the walls are. 

So painters how what are we dealing with here and your window behind us perfect for this room okay so that includes like our baseboards around our doors around the windows all about so one gallon of trim pain usually can cover three to 400 linear feet so we're well under that. You always do two coats of paint to make it look right. 

No worries, there's an awesome and easy to use paint calculator. It can help you calculate how much wall paint you need, or how much trim paint. Now to subtract our doors and windows, they make it really easy for you. Okay so now we're on to opening the can. This one's pretty easy and you can actually use a variety of different tools to do the job. 

Many homeowners will use a flathead screwdriver, or if you have your five in one tool you could use that. You even can reach into your back pocket and use a quarter or a key around the edge. Or maybe you purchased a professional paint can opener from the paint store for a dollar or two. Now, no matter what tool you choose to use the biggest thing is that you want to make sure that you are opening all the way around the can on all the sides. 

So I'm gonna go with my five in one and I'm just gonna use one hand to securely hold the gallon and the other is going to put the five in one just under the lip and a slip it in and then kind of torque it backwards a bit and we have it off and there's no damage done to the can at all. 

So I picked up this paint two days ago, and you can kind of tell that the tint and the base have separated a little bit, and I want to make sure that I have nice consistent coverage, so I'm going to use my complimentary from the paint store handy dandy paint stir stick, and I'm going to put this all the way to the bottom of my gallon, and I'm going to slowly stir it up together. 

You want to make sure that the base and the tint that they put into create your custom color are perfectly mixed together. So we're going to be painting the walls first, this is a preference thing I talked about this in my previous how to prepare room for paint blog post that it's kind of hotly debated.  Do you paint the walls first or the trim first. 

For an everyday kind of beginner homeowner I'm going to recommend that you do the walls first and here's why. Sometimes when you're rolling you might get some splatter to come off your roller onto your trim.  So I've taped off the trim right now, and then that'll be the second thing that we do that way it ensures that the final touches are clean crisp awesome trim and I'll make your entire paint job look great. 

For this space we're using a paint plus primer in one product, so that means we don't need to do a primer coat beforehand. Now there's a few circumstances where you might need to if you're dealing with new fresh drywall, or if you have some stains that you really need to block out, then maybe a primer coat first would be a good option. 

We're going to start by cutting in, and what that refers to is really focusing on the edges and the corners of the room. Using a paintbrush, we're going to do that before we roll the walls. Since we're going to be cutting in and working our way around the room, I like to transfer some of my paint into like a little handy bucket or an empty new 1 gallon paint can. And it even has a liner in here for easy cleanup. 

So I'm going to transfer just a bit of some of my gallon of paint into my pail or empty new 1 gallon paint can, and we'll start cutting in. If you have a space large enough and you think you'll definitely need it at least two gallons of paint I recommend boxing. This is a technique to ensure color consistency between different gallons of paint.

You'll take a 5 gallon bucket, and mix the paint gallons together, then stir your paint together. This way if there's any slight difference in color between the gallons it won't matter when it's all combined and forms one uniform color to paint with. For my brush, when I'm cutting in, I prefer to use a 2 inch angled brush. 

Now again this is preference, but the angle brush allows me to control the paint a bit more, so when I'm coming into a spot where like my wall hits my ceiling, or my walls hit my trim, I can be more precise and sharper and more detailed with the paint. Now when you are getting ready to cut in, you're going to take your brush and you want to load it with paint. 

Now a common mistake is to overload your paint. You do that by dipping it in like to many inches into the empty gallon full or paint or the paint bucket, and you just have paint all over the place. So what you want to do is, you want to dip in, and tap the paint brush on the inside side of the empty gallon of paint or paint bucket. And you only want to get paint on the first inch of your brushes. 

So after you've dipped in the paint you're going to basically drag it along the edge of your can, or simply double tap or triple tap the brush against the inside of the can a couple of times, just to offload it to soft little bit on each side. Okay, we are finally ready to get some paint on the walls, and before I do it, I have a couple more tips for you. 

First of all is how do you hold a paintbrush, and I know that seems basic, but let me tell you I've seen a few people with the fist method, and it doesn't work very well, make your painting any easier, or provide you the best finished results. So the way I like to do it is, I use my pointer finger as kind of my control and my guide the same way that you would almost holding a pencil. And then resting my other fingers back here on the back side. 

The only things you want to keep in mind is that you want it to be comfortable for you, you want to have good control of your brush, and you don't want to grip it too tight, or too little, and obviously you don't want to drop it. You will make a mess dropping your paint brush. It can happen to the best of us. 

Okay so I'm dipping, tapping, I'm offloading, and I'm going to start painting in a corner. That's kind of the easiest space. I like to start on the left or right side of the door. Now when I'm painting I'm getting pretty good coverage, when it starts getting spotty like that, you know, you don't have enough paint left on your brush, and it's time to load it up again. 

Also if I were going like this that's too much paint right there, if I get too much paint on I just want to use my brush and help feather it out when I'm cutting this in. I roughly want to go about 3 in out from the corner of the wall in both directions. This way when I come through with my roller my roller can cover my edge line, but not get so close to the wall that it bangs the other wall.

Now I'm going to move down to my baseboard, and because we taped off our baseboards, my technique isn't quite as critical or require a lot of precision. It's not like I'm cutting in a ceiling edge, and you never really need a perfectly straight line, but you do have to make sure you paint the wall where the baseboard and tape meet completely. Don't go overboard, and don't get a whole lot of paint on the tape in case your taping wasn't so good and the paint gets behind the tape.  

It's okay to get paint on your tape that was the whole idea. Around the windows same deal as the trim. They're taped off, so you don't have to worry about your brush touching. Another tip when you're finished in a section, you want to really give it a good once over. You want to make sure that there's no drips, runs, or globs of paint as you carry on. They're so much easier to fix when they're wet so hit them with a brush while you're painting. 

If they dry then you're getting into sanding, potentially spackling, and basically, we're all the way back at how to prepare room for paint. We're focusing on cutting in all around our windows our door frames and our baseboards and we're saving the ceiling for last. Not all pro painters paint this way but its easier for newbs, first timers, and do it your self type looking to get the job done the easy way. 

Cheap Calgary Painting is going to show you how to cut in like a pro. So cheap painters is up here, and he is cutting in and dang that looks straight. Okay so what does it take to get this perfect cut line to the ceiling. and just reach it to your outer paint and then move down and if you ever get anything on this feeling keep a wet rag with you just wipe it off. 

And you should be good to go. One thing that I highly recommend is don't overload your brush with too much paint, you do not want to have too much on your top that it globs up or runs or touches onto your ceiling so you always want to just have a nice little line, and then when you're done just downwards to your ceiling. Again, I prefer to start behind the door going into the room and work my way clockwise around the room.

And now we can finally move on to the walls and to do that we're going to be using a paint roller a roller is made up of two parts. Basically you have your roller cage and then your roller cover or paint sleeve, which is sometimes also referred to as a roller head. And these two combine together to become your roller. 

Not all roller heads are the same so we want to go over some of the basic most like average homeowner ones that you might see and need to use or should use on smooth surfaces like drywall. Most 10 mil to 15 mil sleeves for homeowner projects are perfect. You might want a little more thicker paint sleeve for maybe a larger room. Maybe your family room is a little bigger. 18 to 19 mil sleeves is something which will hold more paint.

Then you're really into three fourths now, that type of paint sleeve holds up alot of paint. You do it for your stucco that's masonry, or if you are a pro painter you can get away with it on your ceilings, trim, and walls if you've got a lot of practice and really know how to paint. If in double, go with a 15 mil sleeve and you should be ok! 

Anyway, you need to really get in your nooks and crannies you really get it in the nap. Not refers to the roller cover, so a 3/4 nap it's going to be a lot looser right and a thicker pile, now you want to use a thick pile so your roller can hold more paint and get some more paint on the wall and not break your back so much. So for this space we are going to go with the three quarter inch nap. 

Another thing that you have some options in is actually the size of your cage and roller cover. So this is a 9 inch which is kind of typical for a bedroom or every day painting, but roller cages do come in a variety of sizes. They have two inch and four inch which are great for doors and smaller surfaces. And even larger ones like 14 and 18 if you're doing a really big projects but they are harder to work with. If in doubt, go with the typical 9 inch roller and 3 quarter inch nap. You can't go wrong. Don't be shy to pay $5 to $10 per sleeve. Don't be cheap on your roller sleeve. 

Okay we're going to be rolling these walls and working out of a paint tray. Now the one thing to remember when you're choosing your tray is to make sure that it's the correct size for your roller. Once you have your tray, make sure that you also pick up a liner make sure it's the same brand so that they correspond and fit in together.

This is going to make your painting and cleanup so much easier you guys will thank me later. Basically you want to take it up to this top line okay for loading your roller here's what we're going to do you're going to dip it down into the paint but resist the temptation to fully submerge it. I know that it is tempting you're going to roll back and forth to load up the paint it's going to take a couple rolls on the wall to fully saturate your roller and get it going and almost needs like a couple passes to warm up. 

So I'll take it out and I'll go roll how to roll the wall is a hotly debated topic and probably always will be so we're going to show you a couple common techniques and explain how to do them and why people do them and then you can choose the technique that works best for you all right so the first one is the v or the w depends on who you ask. 

This is kind of a basic homeowner technique is that it offloads your paint kind of across the section right instead of in one area is going to be full strokes top to bottom working your way over here. Once again making sure you don't have any lines and overlap each other so you'll just do a light pressure that's it going up and down like that. Don't put too much pressure on or you'll start to get globs.

There's one more technique that's pretty common, and that's kind of blocking it top to bottom this is basically the same method as we just did with the top to bottom all the way ceiling to floor except you're going to work in two sections and then complete and you're going back over kind of blending those two things up to bottom and then blocking but it all looks the same. 

So the moral of the story is pick your preference choose your technique but as long as you're ending up with a great finished product it doesn't matter which technique you use. Another common error is kind of having a roller line. This just means that you had too much paint either on your edge or that you're applying a little bit too much pressure and you're going to end up with a bit of a ridge of paint. 

The biggest thing is to fix it while it's still wet, so to get rid of it we're just going to take a pretty dry roller with much less paint and roll right over that with light pressure. That way your ridge disappears.  Okay so this area here is super common it's what we call a holiday and you can see it's just where the paint didn't go on quite evenly. 

You're just going to backroll right over it, blending it into the paint around it. This is pretty obvious that other times you can't even really notice it on the first coat, so the second coat will take care of it. All right, our walls are done, and now it's on to trim, but first we need to remove our tape and we're going to show you how to do it. 

Some people like to remove it right away. This is dried a little bit, it really doesn't matter, again it's a preference thing. The biggest thing is that when you're removing your tape you pull it evenly and slowly, so that doesn't catch and ruin your paint job. All right, we're getting ready to paint our trim and Cheap Calgary Painter went around the perimeter of the room and laid a strip of masking tape. 

This will protect the carpet, and also press the carpet down just a bit so we can fully paint the trim. It's a good time to mention to you guys that there's a difference between masking tape and painters tape. What I'm about to show you is using painters tape, not masking tape. I'm going to show you how to tape off your walls. As an optional step Cheap Calgary Painters and I are actually going to cut in this room so we can show you that too, but if any of you want to tape it off I'm going to show you the process I would use.

You need to wait until your paint is fully dried and cured. We're putting it directly on the wall resting right where it meets the return of the trim. You don't actually have it on the trim at all it's just meeting it and all the tape is on the wall and then the part that we care about sealing the most is right here along the trim. And if you want, you can use your five and one tool to kind of seal that in. All right, so we're ready to paint the trim. 

I have my interior semi-gloss extra white here in my handy pale or empty 1 gallon cutting can, and I have another new 2 in angled brush. A clean brush, totally fresh and never used. All right hopefully you guys have checked out our how to prepare room for paint blog post so you know that we have already cleaned and removed all the dust from this trim and from the baseboard otherwise it could be a really yucky paint job. 

So make sure you don't skip that step. If you were to paint over dust especially in the corners it can just wreck your paint job so what I like to do is basically put my brush here just letting some of my bristles go up top under the return and with a smooth even stroke. Okay get that and then I work my way down okay, and then when you go to paint the thicker direction I keep a straight brush and this is why we taped off nice smooth strokes there. 

All right my paint job is done I'm thrilled with how it's looking but I just want to show you guys how I put away my paint before I clear everything out of here so I have my wall paint here I take my lid put it on the top and I use a rubber mallet I don't like to use a metal hammer because it can damage the edge and then your seal isn't great I work my way around the edge.

I'm applying firm pressure but you don't want to go too crazy on it not too hard You don't want to dent the can and then one little pro tip I like to use a sharpie marker and label the room and what it was for so on this one I'm going to write bedroom number two and the walls right on the lid and then that way I know exactly what it is. 

Also if I ever want to know the color that I used in this room because people are going to love it so much they're going to ask me what the color is It's right there on top and that my friends is the right way to paint a room I hope you learned a lot and that you're super excited to have your own properly painted room that you love got questions or comments leave them below and remember do it right start.

Hope that helps. If you need help painting rooms in your house or home, and you live in the Calgary, Alberta, Canada area, be sure to give 1/2 Price Pro Calgary Painting a call for all of your interior painting and exterior painting needs. For over a decade and a half our premium showroom quality interior Calgary Painters and decorators have been helping customers and clients save time and money on all types of pro painting. Call (587) 800-2801 for a free painting estimate or free painting price quote.