What order should you paint a room?

Choosing your perfect paint colour is just one of many tricky decisions that will need to be made when decorating a room. Deciding the order in which your room should be painted can feel like a logistical nightmare; but fear not, our experts here at Earthborn have compiled a handy checklist to help you determine the order in which your room should be painted. Helping to reduce the risk of any painting disasters and ensure you get the best possible finish!

Prepare the room

First things first, you need to ensure your room is ready to be painted, therefore you need to prepare in a number of ways:

• Remove as much furniture as possible from the room, this will make the actual job of painting much quicker and easier.
• Dust and vacuum your room to ensure dust-free surfaces.
• You want all surfaces to be smooth for painting, therefore ensure that any cracks or holes in your walls are filled and sanded.
• Likewise, you also want the surfaces you are painting to be clean, dry and sound.
• Use dust sheets to protect your floor/ carpet.
• Sand any woodwork that you will be painting, this makes the surface rough and therefore paints will have something to stick to.
• Ensure you have the appropriate paint brushes and rollers for each section of painting.

Prepare the walls

For newly plastered walls you will be able to use Earthborn’s Claypaint straight away, simply dilute the first coat with 20% water. Some surfaces may require further preparation before the painting can begin.

• Our Multi Purpose Primer makes the ideal base coat for MDF, melamine and interior wood surfaces.
• If you have stubborn dry stains on your walls that need treating, Earthborn’s Isolating Primer will work wonders, tackling stains such as: crayon, water stains, hand marks or smoke stains.
• If your surfaces are still flaky after preparing the walls, use Earthborn’s Wall Glaze to stabilise the surface before you paint.

So now that we have covered the first stages of any paint job, here are our recommendations for the order in which your room should subsequently be painted.

Ceiling

Painting the ceiling first avoids the risk of paint spray on newly painted walls. Use a roller for the majority of the ceiling, followed by a brush around the edges (don’t worry if you overlap onto the walls as this will be painted at the next stage).

Walls

Next up are your walls; to avoid ruining your freshly painted ceiling, use a brush when at ceiling level, specifically use the final bristles on one edge of your brush to get the smooth dividing line you desire. We recommend a short pile roller for the best results on the larger areas. To avoid stripy walls, make sure you use the feathering technique (roll in various directions) and ensure the first coat is fully dry before applying a second coat.

Skirting boards

Use the same technique as above to get a smooth line for your woodwork, by using the edge of your brush. If, however, you are a little shaky when it comes to painting a straight line, place masking tape across the top of your woodwork so that paint does not get onto your walls (just make sure your walls are dry first!)

Windows & door frames

We would recommend painting your doors and window frames at the start of the day, as they will need to remain open as they dry. By painting your windows and doors at the start of the day, your paint will have adequate drying time so that you are able to close them at night and prevent them sticking.

Door

Last up are your internal doors, for the highest quality finish on these, we recommend painting the panels of your door first.

And there you have it, our recommendations for painting a full room.

Have you used Earthborn products for your decorating projects? We would love to hear from you and see the finished product, please send your projects to marketing@earthbornpaints.co.uk