Painting interior walls is the easiest way to bring your living space back to life. But when it comes to interior house painting, proper wall preparation is critical to achieve perfect results. To help you out, we’ve compiled a seven-step guide to preparing interior walls for painting. Clean the walls: To clean the walls that need to be painted, you can use a vacuum cleaner or a towel. If you intend to paint your bathroom and kitchen walls as well, a solution of laundry detergent and water might help you remove residues (e.g. rust-colored drip marks and sticky residue from cooking). After washing the walls, give them a quick rinse and allow them to dry completely. If there is wallpaper on the walls, you’ll need to remove it and then clean the walls properly. If mold is present, apply an anti-mold solution to the affected area; also, get a special sealer (e.g. anti-damp paint) to cover heavy mold growth. Remove old paint: To remove cracked or flaking paint, use a paint scraper and sandpaper to smooth the surface. You can staple a piece of sandpaper to a sanding block or use an electric sander, which is more appropriate for large areas. Repair damaged areas: Interior house painting means much more than cleaning a few walls and choosing a chic color. To get the results expected, you must find all the flaws before priming and painting your walls. Loose patches of old plaster and cracks around window and door frames are some of the most common problems you may observe when inspecting your walls. After removing the old plaster, prepare fresh plaster to repair those areas. As well, a good idea would be to fill the gaps around windows and doors with a flexible sealant. Find “invisible” flaws: While some flaws are visible, others are not. You can use a utility light to find the flaws that are less obvious. Hold the light close to the wall surface, moving it up and down. Circle any flaws you notice so that you can find and repair them later. After executing all the repairs, use sandpaper to smooth imperfections away. Use lining paper: Using lining paper implies additional work, and it usually doesn’t do much good. However, in specific situations, such as when walls have lots of fine cracks or large repair areas, covering them with lining paper can help you get a smooth, flawless base for paint. Prime your walls: If your walls are covered in a water-based paint, you can apply a fresh coat of paint over the old color. But if you intend to paint over a semi-gloss, gloss, or oil-based color, using a primer is imperative to end up with perfectly painted walls. Use a special stain-blocking primer: Although a regular primer can hide small imperfections, most products can’t cover certain marks, such as those left behind by water and permanent markers. These marks will bleed through your paint, even if you apply several coats. First, try to remove the stains; if they won’t go away, use a stain-blocking primer.
The next option was using oil based primer. That stuff is not fun to work with. The fumes are not fun to work around (be sure to open windows!), and you can’t wash it off without using more chemicals. Fortunately somebody suggested we try bleaching the stains, which sounded a bit more feasible and manageable. So we tried it. Dawning coveralls and face masks, and armed with a pump garden sprayer filled with diluted bleach (mostly water with a couple capfuls of bleach), we attacked the stains. After a couple spray downs, the yellow started to disappear! For a couple of days, we misted the ceiling, waited a couple hours and repeated. Most stains were taken care of, the rest were dissolved enough to prime over.

You are spending your hard-earned money on a paint job and you deserve high-quality workmanship that is meant to last. ImageWorks is one of the most reputable painting companies in the United States. We are dedicated to offering you a good value on top-quality house painting and commercial painting, and we happily stand behind everything we do. Follow us on Facebook Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram PaintingExpand Exterior Painters Interior Painters Commercial Painters Siding Gutters All Services About UsExpand Our Team Our Suppliers Testimonials Our Warranty Our Quotes Articles
Decide on the room's personality. Yes, we're Californians, but we believe that color establishes a mood. (How could it not?) So we think it's important to use personality and mood as a backdrop. Do you want a color to calm and soothe you (often appropriate for a bedroom) or engage and energize you (often appropriate for a home office)?