Preparing your walls for painting

We offer everything you need to prepare your walls for painting. Achieve a higher quality finish by taking some extra time and attention when preparing your walls for painting. Preparing your room for painting is one of the most important aspects when carrying out DIY but can often be overlooked due to time and money. We have put together some helpful tips on how to best prepare your room whilst maintaining the tools you use. 

Preparing the room 

 
1. Protect your furniture
   To make the overall job easier try to move as much of the furniture as you can into the middle of the room and cover with protective sheets. This won't only protect your furniture but will also make it easier to move around when painting with nothing in your way. We also recommend covering your floor underneath where you will be painting to ensure nothing gets marked or stained. Just be careful if you do this as it can become a tripping/slip hazard. 
 
2. Remove any pictures or anything handing from the walls
   The next step is to remove any pictures, clocks or anything hanging from the wall and put these to one side. You also want to remove any fixtures such as nails or screws.
 
3. Cover any switches or plug sockets 
   With your light switches and plug sockets, you can either cover these with protective tape or remove them from the wall whilst you paint and prepare the wall. Our low tack and trade masking tape is suitable for covering the switches or plug sockets. 
 
4. Tape up the edges 
   To achieve clean painting lines we recommend using masking tape to tape up the edges of the joining walls and roof. By doing this you are just making the process easier for when you finish as you don't have to touch up any edges and struggle trying to get a clean line free hand. 
 

Preparing your walls 

When it comes to preparing the walls that you are about to decorate it is important to know the kind of surface you are going to be working with as this then determines the preparation needed. 

Newly plastered wall

A newly plastered wall is one of the easiest walls to prepare for painting. As the surface will already be smooth you do not need to scrape or sand any of the surfaces. Instead, it is best to prepare the wall with a high-quality primer prior to painting. This creates the undercoat needed before painting. If you skipped this step the plaster would just end up soaking up the paint making the whole process a lot more expensive and time-consuming as you will use more paint and need to do more coats than if you used a primer. 

A wall that has been previously painted

Before painting over a wall that has been previously painted it is worth doing the following steps to ensure you achieve a higher finish. 

1. Wipe over the wall with sugar soap and a damp cloth and allow to dry. This will help to remove any dust or dirt from the wall before filling. 
2. If there are gaps/holes on the wall it is worth filling these with filler and a flexible filling knife. We have a range of flexible filling knives available in a range of sizes. Allow the filler to fully dry. 
3. When the filler has dried you will need to smooth the surface down with fine sandpaper.
4. With a new piece of fine sandpaper, we then recommend lightly sanding the whole wall. It is important to look for any peeling paint on the wall and ensure this is removed with sandpaper or a scraper to ensure a smooth working surface. 
5. When you have followed the steps above we then recommend going over the wall again with the sugar soap and damp cloth to remove any dust/dirt from sanding. Then go over the wall again with a clean damp cloth to ensure no sugar soap residue has been left on the wall. Allow the wall to fully dry before proceeding with painting. 

A wall that has been previously wallpapered 

Before painting a wall that has been previously wallpapered it is important to ensure the following steps have been followed. 

1. Using a stripping knife score the wallpaper in diagonal crosses. Be careful not to damage the plaster behind the wallpaper, you just want to score the actual wallpaper itself. 
2. An easy way to remove wallpaper from a wall is to make the wallpaper damp with a sponge and water. Wait a couple of minutes after dampening so the water can soak into the wallpaper. Always be careful when working near sockets and switches to ensure no water goes inside them. 
3. Using your stripping knife scrape over the damp wallpaper to easily remove. You may need to repeat this process a couple of times and add some more water if necessary to remove all of the wallpaper. Another quick way that you could look to for removing the wallpaper is a wallpaper stripper, if you use this method follow the steps on the stripping solution to achieve the best results. 
4. When the majority of the wallpaper has been removed it is important to go over the wall with sandpaper to smooth out the wall and remove any small stubborn pieces of wallpaper that you couldn't get off with the scraper. 
5. Wipe over the wall with sugar soap and a damp cloth and allow to dry. This will help to remove any dust or dirt from the wall. 

If you then have gaps on the wall that need filling follow the steps below.  

1. If there are gaps/holes on the wall it is worth filling these with filler and a flexible filling knife. We have a range of flexible filling knives available in a range of sizes. Allow the filler to fully dry. 
2. When the filler has dried you will need to smooth the surface down with fine sandpaper.
3. With a new piece of fine sandpaper, we then recommend lightly sanding the whole wall. It is important to look for any peeling paint on the wall and ensure this is removed with sandpaper or a scraper to ensure a smooth working surface. 
4. When you have followed the steps above we then recommend going over the wall again with the sugar soap and damp cloth to remove any dust/dirt from sanding. Then go over the wall again with a clean damp cloth to ensure no sugar soap residue has been left on the wall. Allow the wall to fully dry before proceeding with painting.

After following the steps above it is now time to start painting. At Blue Spot Tools we offer a range of synthetic paint brushes across different sizes and styles to assist you with your painting and decorating needs. Take a look at our full paint brush range.