How to Paint a Room Properly

Painting badly and painting well take roughly the same amount of paint. The difference is entirely in preparation and in how thin the coats are.

Preparation

Clear and protect. Everything out or into the middle under a sheet. Proper canvas dust sheets, not plastic, which is lethal underfoot.

Wash the walls. Sugar soap, especially above radiators and in kitchens. Paint does not stick to grease, and grease is invisible.

Fill. Every hole and crack, slightly proud. When dry, sand flush with 120 grit and then 180. Run your hand over it — your fingertips find defects your eyes miss.

Caulk. A thin bead where skirting, architrave and coving meet the wall, smoothed with a wet finger. This is the detail that separates a professional-looking room from a decorated one.

Sand woodwork to key the surface, then dust off with a tack cloth.

Mask the edges you cannot cut in confidently. Press the tape edge down hard with a filling knife and remove it while the paint is still slightly wet.

The order

Ceiling, then walls, then woodwork. Working top down means drips land on unfinished surfaces.

Technique

Cut in first, with a 50 mm angled brush, a band about 60 mm wide around every edge. Load the brush a third of the way up the bristles and wipe one side only.

Roll while the cut-in is still wet. A dry cut-in edge shows through as a picture frame around the wall. Roll in a W or M pattern to distribute paint, then lay off with light vertical strokes in one direction. Get as close to the cut-in as the roller allows so the textures match.

Two thin coats. Always. Thick paint sags, dries unevenly and takes longer overall. Wait the full recoat time on the tin.

New plaster

New plaster needs a mist coat: emulsion thinned around 30% with water. Skipping this is why paint peels off fresh plaster in sheets a year later. Let the plaster dry fully first — weeks, not days, for a plastered room.

Cleaning up

Wrap the roller and brush in a bag between coats rather than washing them. Wash properly at the end, reshape the brush and hang it. A good brush washed well lasts a decade.

Time

A normal bedroom is a two-day job done properly: a day of preparation and cutting in, a day of coats. Anyone offering to do it in an afternoon is skipping the first day, and the first day is the one you will see.