Choosing Paint for Your Walls

Paint finish and color are two important considerations that will have a significant impact on your paint job. It's true, the prep is the most important part of a paint job, but the choice you make for paint finish will dramatically affect the amount of prep needed to get the professional quality finish you want. Also color, as well as paint quality, will have an impact on the work load with regard to the number of coats required for good coverage.

About the Paint Finish

Paint finish will have the most significant impact on surface preparation because shiny paints like eggshell and semi–gloss tend to show flaws in wall surfaces, while flat finishes and some faux finishes tend to hide rough spots. In addition to being a good choice for hiding flaws, flat paint is very easy to touch up later to hide smudges and stains. If little imperfections in the paint finish will bother you, you will not be happy with a shiny finish unless your walls are already smooth or you are willing to do significant work to smooth them.

About the Paint Color

Color becomes an important consideration if you're making a radical change to the original color or you plan to use red or yellow as a finish color. A major change of wall color, especially if you are planning a lighter color over a dark shade, will require at least 3 coats and maybe more to cover completely.

If you choose to put a red or yellow on your walls plan on multiple coats, up to 8 or more for some of these colors. Red and yellow are relatively transparent due to the lack of pigment in the neutral base required to retain the vibrant quality of these colors. This lack of pigment means red and yellow paint colors don't cover or hide well. Adding a dark pigment to red or yellow creates earth tones such as rust or olive. These tones will cover much better than the pure, bright red and yellow tones.