In this guide, we are going to cover how to paint walls like professional interior painters in Surrey do, so that your walls look amazing! In a previous article we covered the preparation step, so pick a great colour and let’s jump right into the fun part of painting, applying the paint! If you want to know how to prep your walls for painting, have a look at this article that we wrote previously: How to Prep Your Walls Like A Pro: A Surrey Painters’ CHECKLIST.

If you want to know How to Paint A Room – An Interior Painter in Surrey’s Guide, check it out here. It covers the process of what to paint first, second and so on. In this article we are going to breakdown in more detail specifically how to paint walls.

Tools And Paint That You Will Need

Tools: 1 reasonable quality stiff bristle brush, 1 paint tray, 1 roller cage/handle, 1 roller sleeve per colour (10-13 mils), 1 pole (you can use a broom handle), 1 step ladder, 1 dry and empty paint can.

Paint: 1-2 gallons of paint. 1 gallon of paint will cover approximately 400 square feet of wall surface (that is 200 square feet per coat of paint). 1 gallon will usually suffice for a 10×12 foot room and smaller. If your room is bigger than that, you’ll probably need a second gallon.

Interior painters in Surrey use a wide variety of paints. Don’t worry too much about which paint store to buy from, concern yourself more with the quality of the paint. Each supplier carries a selection of products ranging from low quality paint to high quality paint. Speak with the sales associate at whichever store you go to and tell them that you are going to paint walls, and they will make some recommendations for you.

Here are a few of the major brands:

Sherwin-Williams
Benjamin Moore
Cloverdale Paints
Dulux Paint

How To Paint Walls Like Pro Interior Painters in Surrey

Interior painting can be fun. It is very methodical, and if you follow these steps, then the project should go relatively smoothly. This procedure can be used for new, or previously painted walls. The only difference is that you will absolutely need a coat of primer if the walls are new, but the procedure is the same.

  1. Pour about ¼ of a gallon of paint into your dry, empty paint can. Professional interior painters in Surrey call this a “cut-can.” You are going to use this for doing your cutting, or edging. This will minimize the amount of paint that gets spilled if you drop the can and is much lighter and easier to carry.
  2. Pour about ½ a gallon of paint into your paint tray.
  3. Put your paint roller into the tray and cover it completely in paint. Doing this early will allow the paint time to saturate the roller material which will make it easier to work with when it comes time to roll.
  4. Pick up your “cut-can,” and put your paint brush in it. Push the brush down into the paint to get paint up into the bristles.
  5. Place your step ladder in one corner of the room and climb up to a height close to the ceiling.
  6. Start cutting in.
    1. Painting walls is kind of like colouring in a colouring book. Start with the edges and then fill in the rest.
    2. Pull your brush out of the can, wiping off the excess paint on the inside of the can, and put it on the wall about an inch or two from the ceiling.
    3. Slowly, press down and move the edge of the paint brush towards the ceiling until it touches corner, and move the brush along that groove until your brush runs out of paint.
    4. Go back over the paint that you just applied with your brush making sure to smooth out any globs of paint. Try to feather out the bottom edge of the paint. Once it has dried, it’s not easy to make smooth. The paint should come down four inches or so from the ceiling. You want it to come down far enough that you can overlap it with your roller without bonking into the ceiling.
    5. Go around the whole room repeating this step. Paint the edge all the way along the ceiling, the vertical corners, along the top of the baseboards, around the window and door trim.
    6. Allow to dry to the touch. If you try to roll the paint on before your “cut lines” have fully dried, then the roller will start to pull the paint off the wall and create a texture. Interior painters in Surrey will often tackle two or three rooms at a time so to keep busy while waiting for the paint to dry.
  1. It’s Time To Roll!
    1. The next step to painting walls is to fill in the fields, or the center of the walls.
    2. Fasten your pole to the end of your roller cage/handle. There should be threads on the end. Interior painters use extension poles, but it’s not necessary.
    3. Dip your roller in the paint a few times to saturate the roller material as much as you can.
    4. Transfer the roller to the wall. If you are right-handed, I suggest working from right to left. And vice versa.
    5. Put the roller about a foot from the left edge of the wall, and half-way down from the ceilings.
    6. Move the roller up and down wall, smoothing it out evenly. If you find that the roller is getting dry or running out of paint, then you are spreading it thin. You shouldn’t have to fight the paint to spread it out.
    7. You want your roller to overlap the cut lines that you applied earlier. Move your roller all the way up to the ceiling, then all the way down to the baseboard, twisting the roller ever so slightly at each change of direction so that the rolling pattern forms a “W” or “M”.
    8. To paint walls right, the best interior painters finish the rolling stroke with a downward motion. Think of it like the pile of a carpet. If you move your hand one way over it, it will look a little different than when you move it the other way. Same with rolling paint. If you finish with an upstroke one time, then with the next dip of the roller finish with a downstroke, it will look slightly uneven when it dries.
    9. Make your way all the way from one corner to the to the other, left to right.
    10. Repeat for each wall.
  2. Repeat Steps 1 through 7 for the second coat, and third if need be.
  3. Clean-up. Your finished!

You now know how to paint walls like professional interior painters in Surrey do. Way to go! Give yourself a hand .

If you are tired from all of that and don’t feel like tackling the rest of the house yourself, we would be happy to help. Check out our interior painting services, fill out the form and we will reach out to you shortly.

-Jeremy