How to Repaint a Room in Your Home From Top to Bottom
Roll up your sleeves and take a deep breath—you’ve got this
- Primer
- Paint
- Painter’s tape
- Rags
- Paintbrushes
- Paint rollers
- Paint trays
- Paint stirrer
- Drop cloths
If you want to save money while giving your home a refresh, learning how to repaint a room yourself is a great place to start. When repainting a room, you may need to work on the walls, ceiling, or trim—or all three areas. If you don’t have much experience with painting rooms, hiring a professional is smart, especially if you have a tall ceiling or tricky trim. Either way, adding modern colors will make it your new favorite room (at least until the next room repainting job you do).
Prep the Room for Repainting
Photo: Paul Maguire/ Adobe StockLearning how to repaint a room starts with preparing the walls, ceiling, and trim. Proper preparation will save time and help you avoid mistakes later. Preparing a room for painting involves repairing damage to walls and the ceiling, applying painter’s tape, calculating how much paint you need, and moving furniture out of the way.
Repair Any Damage
If the ceiling or walls have cracks or holes, you should fix these areas first. If you need to spackle a wall to fix holes, give the compound time to completely dry. If there’s peeling paint, it will affect the ability of the new paint to adhere. Carefully scrape these areas to remove loose sections without damaging the wall’s structure.
Calculate the Paint You’ll Need
One gallon of paint should cover 300 to 400 square feet. Measure the room’s dimensions and buy the right amount of primer and paint. To simplify things, you could use the same primer on the walls and ceiling, or you could use a thicker primer on the ceiling to avoid splatters.
Clean the Room
One of the key steps for how to prep walls for painting is to clean them. Remove dust from the ceiling and trim, too, to ensure proper paint adhesion.
Protect Items You Don’t Want to Paint
No matter how careful you are, paint will splatter and drip. Take every precaution to protect your items before starting the work.
Remove outlet and light switch covers. Use painter’s tape on the edges of trim along the floor or ceiling. Cover or—better yet—remove furniture from the room. Use plastic to cover light fixtures and similar items that you cannot move.
You also need to take steps to protect the floors when painting. Put down drop cloths or plastic sheets to keep drips away.
Apply a Paint Primer
Photo: Jelena Jojic Tomic/Stocksy/ Adobe StockWhen repainting, you’ll want to apply primer first. What does paint primer do? It provides an even surface for the new paint to adhere to. If you have darker colors on the wall now, primer will reduce the risk of the old color bleeding through the new color.
Always stir paint—including primer—before pouring it into a tray to ensure an even mixture of the ingredients and color pigments.
Repaint the Ceiling
Repainting a ceiling is optional when repainting a room. If you like the current color and it’s in good condition, you may be able to skip working on the ceiling.
You want to avoid splatters when working over your head while repainting a ceiling. Use a thicker paint that’s made specifically for the ceiling to reduce the risk of splatters.
Repaint the Walls
Photo: Carolyn Lagattuta/Stocksy/ Adobe stockAfter repainting the ceiling, you can begin working on the walls. You don’t need a special type of splatter-free paint for the walls.
Use a brush to carefully cut in areas near where you’ve applied painter’s tape. Then, use a roller for the wide-open sections of the wall (or ceiling).
Add a Second Coat
Depending on the type of paint and the humidity levels in the house, it can take anywhere from two to 24 hours for paint to dry before you can add a second coat. Let the paint dry before deciding whether to add a second coat. If you have good coverage and no bleed-through after one coat, you can skip the second coat.
To be certain about the coverage level, look for any bare spots on the ceiling or walls at different times of the day and under different lighting conditions.
Reapply the Painter’s Tape for the Trim
Photo: Christopher/ Adobe StockIf your process of repainting a room also involves repainting the trim, completely finish the walls and ceiling first, and let everything dry. Remove the old painter’s tape and put down new tape to protect the walls and ceiling while you’re painting the trim.
Repaint the Trim
It’s best to paint the room’s trim with a brush. Trim may have grooves or curves that make it tough to receive full coverage with a roller. Let the first coat dry before deciding whether to apply a second coat.
If your baseboard and doorway trim take a lot of abuse from kids and pets, consider using satin or semi-gloss finishes, which are easier to wipe down.
Clean the Area
After everything is painted and dry, remove all the painter’s tape. Carefully pick up the drop cloths and move the furniture back into the room.
Clean your paint brushes and rollers. Seal any extra paint tightly, so you can use it again for touch-ups later.
Mistakes to Avoid
If you want to repaint a room as a DIY project, you need to avoid making certain mistakes, including:
Failing to clean and prepare the surface
Using poor-quality paint and equipment
Not researching colors ahead of time
Not using a primer
Repainting trim before walls
Failing to cover or move furniture
Failing to protect the floors and light fixtures
Failing to use painter’s tape
Being in a hurry
Using too much paint, causing drips
Not waiting for the paint to dry before the next step
The best way to avoid mistakes when repainting a room in your home is to hire a local professional wall painter. If you make errors, you may have to purchase extra paint, driving up the cost and time to do the work yourself.
When to Repaint a Room in Your Home
Deciding when to repaint a room in your home should start with an inspection of the existing paint. If you see worn or faded spots or if the walls have significant scuffs from furniture, pets, and children, it’s a good time to repaint. A fresh coat of paint and modern color schemes can also refresh a room's style.
Ideally, people will repaint a room every three to 10 years. Rooms that are frequently used and exposed to moisture, like bathrooms and kitchens, will need repainting more often than rooms that are not used often.
If you’re looking to freshen up your home before putting it on the market, keep in mind that neutral colors have a broader appeal to homebuyers because they act as a blank canvas and give off a calming, clean vibe.
DIY vs. Hiring a Pro
Most people can learn how to repaint a room themselves as a DIY project. However, if you have a higher-than-average ceiling or have a lot of complex trim inside the room, you should rely on a local interior painting professional. The charge for using professional painters is between $2 and $6 per square foot for interior work.
The pro will have the ladders and gear needed to repaint a room quickly and successfully. Rather than going through the hassle of climbing ladders to reach the upper area of walls or the ceiling yourself, a pro can do the job safely. If you don’t own the right ladders, you’ll have to rent or buy them, increasing the cost of the DIY work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Your return on investment (ROI) for interior repainting work is around 107%. Repainting an interior room in your home can give it an updated look that will appeal to potential buyers. A fresh paint job could reassure buyers that you’ve cared for the home and made regular updates over the years you’ve owned it.
The best time to paint indoors is typically in winter. When the weather is colder outside, you receive reasonable temperatures and humidity levels inside your heated home. You’ll have better paint adhesion when humidity is at average levels or below. To avoid higher-than-average humidity, avoid repainting indoors on winter days when it’s raining or snowing outside.
Rather than learning how to repaint a room in its entirety, you might want to touch up areas that are showing worn paint or damage. Learning how to match the paint color already on the walls can be challenging, though. If you don’t have any of the original paint, your local hardware store might have a record in your account of your past paint color purchases. Otherwise, remove and take a small piece of painted drywall to the hardware store to do paint matching. Test the new paint in a hidden area to be sure it matches.
When you hire a professional painter, this expert may use a paint sprayer to repaint a room instead of a roller and brushes. Using a paint sprayer versus a roller for a DIY job can be tough for a beginner. The cost of renting or buying a sprayer will be higher than buying rollers and brushes. It can be tough to ensure even coverage with a sprayer when you’re a beginner. Avoiding splatters and overspray in other areas of the room can be difficult, too. Sprayers will save a lot of time, though.
.jpg?impolicy=leadImage)
Get our Angi-powered app
