Transform your space into a place where you can relax and get away from the outside world with paint. Painting is the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to give a room or your entire home a complete makeover. If you’re tired of living with walls that don’t inspire you, change them with a fresh coat of paint.
Using Your Imagination
Paint color options are offered in infinite numbers of shades, colors and tints. Only your imagination can stop you from transforming your walls into a masterpiece. Apply a single color and use your furniture and lifestyle to make a room fun or relaxing. Alternatively, apply textures, patterns and multiple colors to make the walls the focal point.
Free iProducts Paint Apps
If you know you want a change and don’t know what it is exactly you want, download the free Sherwin-Williams paint app called ColorSnap. ColorSnap allows you to take pictures of your home and then apply colors from the Sherwin-Williams palettes until you get exactly the look you want without ever having to apply paint.
The app also allows you to browse thousands of colors, capture a color that inspires you from other locations, share your ideas on Facebook to get opinions from friends on your choices and take the picked colors into the store to get your paint.
Another great app for home painting is the free PaintRemedy app which gives you tips and suggestions for identifying paint problems and issues both inside and out and tells you how to fix the problems. Use this app once you’re ready to start prepping your home for painting, to fix any issues before you break out the paintbrush.
Prepping the Room
Once you’ve decided on a color, it’s now time to do the less fun stuff such as washing the walls and prepping the room for painting. Don’t forget to pick up plenty of drop cloths and painter’s tape to protect anything you don’t want paint on.
Try to remove all the furniture from the room before getting started. If that isn’t an option, move furniture to the middle of the room and cover with drop clothes. Take down wall and switch plates, drapes and blinds and loosen any light fixtures, allow them to hang, covered with a plastic bag to protect.
Lightly sand any woodwork so the new paint will stick and scrap off any peeling paint. If you have glossy walls, you will need to use a commercial deglosser or TSP (trisodium phosphate) to help the next layer of paint to stick. After completing the prep, wash the walls with warm water and soap, and then allow walls to dry before applying paint. A coat of primer will be necessary if you scraped down to the bare walls or this is the first coat of paint on a fresh wall.
It’s Time to Paint
Now you’re on to the fun stuff and seeing your space transformed by the color or colors you picked out. During this exciting time, there are still a few rules to follow to get the best look out of your paint. Paint ceilings before walls and walls before trim.
Always maintain a wet edge to avoid creating lines and ridges in your paint. Keep your rollers and brushes loaded with enough paint so the splattering is less but not so much that they drip. Use a zigzag pattern to paint walls and paint the entire wall before stopping to eliminate lap marks (no one wants to get done and see the roller strokes on the wall).
Remember to tape any areas where two colors of paint come together and remove the tape before the paint coat dries to avoid the paint peeling off. If you need a perfectly straight line, use a level and a straight line and pencil to draw the line on the wall and then tape along the line.
Open a Window
Also an often forgotten rule for inside painting: always have some ventilation even with the newer less fumy paints. All paints have some smells and you shouldn’t be breathing them in (unless you love the “high” lightheaded feeling brought on by painting in a closed up room; it’s still not healthy). Eye protection and old clothing is also recommended.
Finish up, clean up, put the furniture back and it’s time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor in your freshly painted abode.