Instantly enhance the interior of your home with a fresh coat of paint. Follow our steps below to learn how to paint a room properly and get the best results.
Consider painting the walls starting from a corner of the room that isn't hit by direct sunlight. Sunlit walls may be too hot for the paint to make its initial bond, possibly affecting the final cure. If the wall is warm to the touch, wait until it cools down before you apply the paint.
There are 5 steps to completing this project:
Before finalizing your wall colour choice and painting your room, paint test panels with the colours you are considering. You can purchase blank test panels from our paint centre or make them from cut-up drywall, hardboard, or foamcore board. Compare your colours under all the lighting conditions you will find in the room over the course of a full day and evening.
To prepare your walls for paint, start by removing all of the electrical cover plates on the wall. Put the screws back into the outlet box to avoid misplacing them. Pull off dimmer knobs and cover the switches and receptacles with masking tape.
Remove all the furniture or group it in the centre of the room. Protect it from spatter with a plastic drop cloth. Mask any surfaces you’re not painting – such as door and window casings – with blue painter's tape. Mask off the baseboards with 12-inch baseboard masking, overlapping the floor drop cloth (clean the baseboards before taping to ensure good adhesion.)
Box the pint (mix the contents of all of the containers for consistency) in a 5-gallon bucket and stir. Prime the roller cover and cutting-in brush by wetting with a misting bottle (for latex paint). Remove excess water before applying paint. Start by cutting in a corner with the brush. Cut in only as far as your arm will reach to make sure you keep a wet edge when you roll on the paint.
Begin rolling by applying a vertical strip that overlaps the cut-in strip. Roll paint in a W pattern, then spread the paint to fill in the pattern. Work in small sections so the paint doesn't begin to dry before you can fill in the section. Fill the roller with a light load and roll the wet paint from floor to ceiling to blend and finish each section. Let the first coat dry at least 12 hours before applying the second coat.
Give the wall paint a minimum of 24 hours to cure, then mask with blue painter's tape. If the wall isn't full cured, mask with white quick-release tape so you won't remove paint when you remove the tape. Don't puddle paint against the tape, however, or you'll pull off paint along with the tape when you remove it. Remove the tape immediately by pulling it down and away from the wall.
