Painting tips I wish I had known when I first started painting the interior of my house that will save you time and money.
In case you are wondering, I’m still working on modernizing my kitchen and have a couple of posts coming out this summer to share how I am building a new kitchen island with waterfall countertop and kitchen table combo.
So, if you have been following my progress or are interested in my modern kitchen makeover, stay tuned for that!
This week I’ve been painting the walls of my bedroom. And as I was painting, I realized how much faster I’ve gotten over the past five years of painting every surface of three homes and one camper!
Remember when I painted my vinyl Bathroom floor to look like cement tile last summer? I still love that floor!
I think it’s always fun to learn new information or ideas that make things more efficient. So, I came up with this list of my favorite ways to make painting faster and easier.
Table of Contents
- Tips to Make Painting Easier and Faster – Video
- Tips to Paint the Interior of Your House Easier
- 1. Prepare to Paint
- 2. Use Painters Tape When you need to
- 3. Sometimes you need to use primer
- 4. Use a quality paint brush
- 5. Remove painters Tape when paint is still wet
- 6. Clean and reuse paint brushes
- 7. Plastic paint cans and pourable paint lids
- 8. Wrap up your painting supplies
- Frequently asked questions
Tips to Make Painting Easier and Faster – Video
Painting the interior of your home yourself can save you a lot of money! And it’s fun once you know a few tricks to make it easier. Then you can paint any room or part of your home any color anytime you want!
Learn my favorite painting tricks for painting the inside of your home the easy way in this short video:
Tips to Paint the Interior of Your House Easier
1. Prepare to Paint
Getting ready to paint takes twice as long as actually painting a room. But it’s twice as important.
If you prepare any surface that you are about to paint, correctly, your project is guaranteed to turn out 100% better than if you just start throwing paint on it.
To help make painting the interior of my home easier and more successful I follow these preparation steps:
- Move furniture away from the surface that you are painting. Either to the other side of the room or another room entirely, to give you plenty of room to work.
- Remove everything from the surface that you are painting. For instance, if you’re painting the walls remove wall art, electric outlet covers, and curtain rods etc.
- Dust and/or clean the surface you are about to paint.
- Use painters tape and/or plastic to protect anything you don’t want to get paint on
To paint the walls, ceilings, and trim on the interior of my home I usually just dust to remove any cobwebs or debris that could get stuck to the wall in the paint.
If there is obvious soiling of the surface, I clean with soap and water and let it dry completely.
Always take the time to move things out of the way and put down plastic to protect floors or objects that you can’t move to avoid getting paint on them.
Every time I hurry and don’t take the time to protect something from paint, it gets spilled on it.
2. Use Painters Tape When you need to
Don’t be a crazy tape person!
When I first started painting the interior of my home, I had painter’s tape from one end of a room to the other.
Then, I realized that there is a time and place for tape.
If you have a good, angled brush and are careful you can easily paint around doors, windows, and without taping everything.
And believe it or not, it will look better than if you taped it.
I always use the Frog tape for painters tape. It does cost a little more than the blue stuff, but it is works better and is worth it.
3. Sometimes you need to use primer
I know you probably don’t want to hear this because it means it may will take longer.
But sometimes you DO need to use primer when painting the interior of your home.
I know! They do have some fantastic paints out there these days that say they guarantee one coat of paint coverage.
But that does not always work.
One reason that you might want to consider using a primer when painting the interior of your home is when going from a dark color to a light color.
For instance, I relearned this lesson when I painted my bathroom last summer. I was painting it white over what I thought was a light gray.
When I painted the same white over the same gray in my bedroom this week it worked a lot better when I used primer first to create a lighter surface to paint my white onto.
Did you know you can get a primer tinted? If you are painting a light-colored object dark, ask the person at the paint desk to tint it a darker color like gray.
Other reasons to use a primer when painting the interior of your home:
- Brand new drywall
- When painting over high gloss paint
- Stains from old water damage or smoking
- To seal and eliminate pet or smoke smells
4. Use a quality paint brush
Good paint brushes aren’t cheap. But they are worth it.
And they will last a really long time if you take care of them and clean them (see below).
Always use a good quality brush when painting the interior of your home.
The higher quality bristles will give you better and more even coverage.
And a nice paint brush will make it so easy to paint edges around doors and windows without even using painters’ tape!
My favorite brush is a Zibra 2 inch angled paint brush. I had never heard of it until I got one free at a blogging conference last year and it works perfectly.
My other favorite brands of paint brushes to use are Wooster and Purdy.
I find I can paint almost anything well with a 2-21/2 inch paint brush.
And I almost exclusively use angled brushes that make it SO easy to cut in along edges and get straight lines without using painters tape.
And I almost forgot! I love using a stubby handled paint brush especially when working in a tight space so a long handle doesn’t get in the way!
5. Remove painters Tape when paint is still wet
When you do use painters’ tape, it comes off more easily when the paint is still wet.
Right after you have completely finished any coats of paint that you are applying to your project, so you are completely done painting the project, carefully remove any painters tape that you applied.
If you forget to do so and your paint has already dried for a day, I recommend running a utility knife along the edge of the tape where it meets the paint. This should help keep the paint from peeling where the tape meets the paint when you remove it.
6. Clean and reuse paint brushes
And while we are on the subject of paint brushes, clean your paint brush when you are done using it so you can use it on your next project.
How to Clean latex paint from a paint brush
- Use or wipe off as much of the paint as you can from the paint brush.
- Run water over the brush until the water coming out of the brush runs mostly clear.
- Squeeze out as much water as you can from the brush.
- Apply a drop of dish soap to the brush and work it into the brush (I often will let the brush sit for a while at this point).
- Use a scrub brush to scrub the paint from the head of the bristles to the ends.
- Rinse the brush again under running water.
- Squeeze as much water out of the brush as you can.
- Let the brush air dry and store it in the cardboard box it came in to help protect the bristles and keep it’s shape.
This is how I clean paint brushes when I need to. I’m not running a paint business and doing this every day or every week. Some people say that cleaning paint brushes this way is not good for your septic system or the environment. As with everything on this blog, this is my opinion, anything you do is at your own risk.
7. Plastic paint cans and pourable paint lids
I don’t know what planet I have been on…I’ve been painting the interior of my house off and on for the past 5 years, and I just last week bought a paint can with a pourable lid.
Genius!
And plastic to boot! More genius.
I have all of these half empty paint cans in a closet that I keep in case I have to touch something up someday. But, years later, when I need to open them up and use them, I have to use a blow torch to open them because they have rusted shut!
I definitely recommend getting paint in plastic cans if possible and with pourable lids. It is SO much easier to pour the paint out of the can without making a mess and wasting paint and easier to open plastic paint can lids.
8. Wrap up your painting supplies
Most of the time when you paint something in your home you have to do more than one coat of paint.
Or maybe you start painting and then you don’t have time to finish because you have something else you need to go do and can’t get back to painting for several hours or days.
When I’m using latex paint and I need to stop painting, but still need to finish the painting project I am working on hours or days later, I throw my roller, paint brush, and paint tray in a garbage bag, twist it up tightly, and throw it in my refrigerator.
Then, when you have time to paint again, just take the bag of supplies out of the refrigerator, and take the supplies out of the bag and use them to paint.
It saves paint, supplies, and time because you’ll reuse the paint brush roller and tray when you are ready to work on your paint project again.
Frequently asked questions
How many coats of paint do you need to use?
You need to use as many coats of paint as it takes to cover your surface well. Sometimes that’s one coat of paint and sometimes that’s more. It depends on many factors including: what color you are painting over, what new color you are using for paint, how heavy you apply paint, paint type, and supplies you use.
What is your favorite time saving painting trick? Let us know in the comments below. I love doing things the easy way!
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