5 Steps to Take when Preparing Your Interior for Painting
A beautiful and enduring interior paint job doesn’t simply happen overnight. While interior painting might not be the most technical or intensive project compared to other types of renovations, achieving optimal results requires plenty of knowledge, effort, and attention. The prep work that precedes the painting process itself greatly determines the project’s success as well as its efficiency and safety. If you fail to take these steps, you’ll often end up with more work on your hands for a lesser outcome. With this in mind, many homeowners and business owners defer to the experts, hiring professional painters to handle preparation, painting, and cleanup. Of course, others might prefer the do-it-yourself approach. Either way, the same steps must be taken. Let’s go over five essential steps to take when preparing your interior for a fresh coat of paint.
How to Prepare for Interior Painting
1. Establish Your Vision
The best interior painting projects begin with a comprehensive vision. Playing things by ear is a recipe for disaster when it comes to this type of project. If you decide you’re not in love with a particular color halfway through painting, for instance, you’ll be in for a frustrating and costly mess. As such, it’s important to get the details straight from the get-go, including things like color choices, paint types, textures, finishes, room configuration, lighting, and so on. Fortunately, modern tools have made this pre-visualization process easier than ever. If you’re not sure about how to select interior paint colors or you’re stuck between a few promising options, you can use online color visualizer tools (examples) to virtually paint an image of the room in question via augmented reality (AR) technology. While these results aren’t 100% accurate, they can give you a much stronger sense of how an interior space will look when the job is complete -- some tools even offer different lighting conditions for a more thorough exploration. Additionally, you can use color samples and swatches for some in-person color testing in your space. However you approach this initial stage, you want to feel confident in your choices so you can move forward without second thoughts.
2. Strategize Your Schedule
Both residential and commercial interior painting projects can be challenging to set up and execute due to certain scheduling conflicts, restrictions, and preferences. If you’re planning on tackling the project yourself, you’ll have more leeway in this regard, though the project will take much longer to complete than if you were to hire an experienced crew instead. Conversely, professional painters can get the job done quicker, but they might get in the way of your home or workplace. Ideally, you’ll want your painting services to work according to your scheduling needs. In order to achieve this optimal timeline, you may need to compare multiple contractors before finding the best fit, which can take some time. Still, doing your due diligence is worth the time and effort if it means you can maintain peace of mind when the process begins. Once you’ve found a reliable and flexible painting contractor, you’ll then want to make some preparations of your own, such as keeping pets and children away from the painting project, posting signage at your workplace to ensure employees and customers don’t touch wet paint, and so on.
3. Arm Yourself with the Proper Tools
Professional interior painting services come equipped with a wide variety of tools and products to facilitate the project from start to finish. If you’re going it alone, you’ll want to do the same. While the precise items required for interior painting may vary from one project to the next, there are several general items you’ll need for any project, including:
Primer
The proper amount of paint (enough for two coatings
Screwdriver, hammer, other tools
Personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face mask/shield, gloves, hat, comfortable clothing
Surface cleaners
Painter’s tape
Brushes, rollers, and/or sprayers
Drop cloths and coverings
Buckets and trays
Extension poles
Ladder(s)
Caulk and caulking gun
Putty knife
Sanding tools
...and more
Having the proper tools on hand will ensure that you can handle every part of the project and solve problems on the fly.
4. Clear Out and Clean Your Interior Spaces
After you’ve determined your vision, gotten your painting schedule in place, and stocked up on the necessary items, it’s time to ready the room itself for the ensuing project. This process can take anywhere from a couple of hours to more than one day, depending on the room’s size, configuration, and how much stuff is inside it. For starters, you’ll want to remove any and all moveable furniture and accessories from the premises so they don’t obstruct the painting process or become targets for fallen/dripping/spilled interior house paint. Large, heavy, and/or fixed objects that you don’t plan on painting should be covered with secure tarps or plastic sheets/bags. After all that, it’s time to clean the room. Dust, dirt, and grime are eyesores and hazards in their own right, but they can also interfere with your commercial or home interior painting results. Ultimately, the cleaner the room is prior to painting, the smoother the project will go and the better the outcome will be. Dust, vacuum, sweep, mop, and scrub your various surfaces as needed for this portion of preparation.
5. Prepare Each Surface Prior to Painting
The final step to take before finally painting your interior surfaces is to properly prepare said surfaces. Dirty, worn down surfaces are not optimally receptive to new coats of paint. Executing the right surface preparation solutions will help ensure that the fresh coatings go on evenly and remain adherent for a long time to come. Proper surface prep includes thorough cleaning, scraping away old, loose paint, variable sanding, caulking seams to seal gaps, setting and spackling nailheads, patching holes and cracks, and more. It may also be necessary to apply a coat of primer to a surface before painting it, namely if the surface has never been painted before, is highly porous, and/or very worn down.
Interior Painting: Preparation Is at Least Half the Battle
If you want your interior painting project to enhance your home or business and stand the test of time, you need to invest in the proper preparation. While those with enough time and drive can achieve these optimal results on their own, it often helps to have a commercial or residential interior painting professional in your corner, at least for key portions of the project. At Nash Painting, we’ve helped countless homeowners and business owners across Nashville, Brentwood, and/or Franklin, TN realize their interior painting visions through our thorough surface preparation and painting offerings. To learn more about us, our hassle free painting services, and our values, call us at 615-829-6858 today!