How much paint do I need for one room?

A gallon covers roughly 350 to 400 square feet in one coat. Measure the perimeter of the room, multiply by the ceiling height, and do not bother subtracting doors and windows unless the room has a lot of glass. Then double it, because you are doing two coats. A typical 12 by 12 bedroom with 8 foot ceilings takes about two gallons for the walls.

Do I really need primer?

Not always. You need it on bare drywall, over patches and repairs, when you are going from a dark color to a light one, and any time there is a stain that could bleed through. If you are painting a similar color over a sound painted wall, a quality paint will handle it in two coats without a separate primer.

What paint sheen should I use in a bedroom?

Eggshell is the usual answer for bedrooms and living rooms. It has a slight softness to it, hides wall imperfections better than anything glossier, and still wipes down. Use satin in hallways, kids rooms, and kitchens where walls get touched more, semi-gloss on trim, doors, and bathrooms, and flat on ceilings.

Why did my paint bleed under the tape?

Because the tape edge was not sealed. Run a thin coat of the color that is already on the wall along the tape line first and let it dry. That seals the edge, so when the new color bleeds it bleeds the old color into the old color and you get a clean line.

Is expensive paint actually worth it?

Usually yes, because the cost of paint is small next to the cost of the time. Benjamin Moore Regal Select or Aura covers in fewer coats, levels out roller texture better, and holds its color for years longer. If a cheaper paint needs a third coat, the money you saved on the gallon is gone and you have spent another day.

How long should I wait between coats of paint?

Read the can, but four hours is a safe general rule for a latex wall paint in normal conditions. Recoating too early is what pulls the first coat back off the wall and leaves you with a patchy mess. Humidity slows it down, so give it longer on a wet Tennessee summer day.

Painting 101: How to Paint a Room Properly

Painting a room is one of the few jobs in a house that a normal person really can do well themselves. It is also the job people most often rush, and rushing shows up on the wall for the next ten years. Here is how we do it, in the order we do it.

What you need before you open a can

A 2.5 inch angled sash brush. Not a wide flat one. The angle is what lets you cut a clean line.
A roller frame, a few 3/8 inch nap covers, and an extension pole.
A roller tray or, better, a five gallon bucket with a grid. The bucket holds more and spills less.
Painter's tape, a putty knife, lightweight spackle, caulk and a caulk gun.
120 and 220 grit sanding sponges.
Canvas drop cloths. Plastic is slippery and paint never dries on it.
A damp rag in your back pocket the entire time. This is the most useful item on the list.

How much paint will it take

A gallon covers roughly 350 to 400 square feet in one coat. Measure the perimeter of the room, multiply by the ceiling height, and do not bother subtracting doors and windows unless the room is mostly glass. Then double the number, because you are doing two coats.

A normal 12 by 12 bedroom with 8 foot ceilings works out to about two gallons for the walls. Buy the second gallon at the same time and from the same batch. Two gallons tinted a week apart can come out slightly different, and you will see it where they meet.

Prep is the whole job

This is the part that separates a paint job that looks professional from one that looks like a weekend. It is also the part with no shortcut. Roughly 70% of our time on an interior repaint goes into work that happens before any color goes on the wall.

Wash the walls. Especially kitchens, bathrooms, and anywhere above a baseboard heater. Paint does not stick to grease or dust. Warm water and a little dish soap is enough for most rooms.
Fill the holes. Lightweight spackle, slightly overfilled, sanded flat once it is dry. Run your hand over it. Your hand finds things your eye misses.
Sand the glossy spots. A quick pass with 220 grit anywhere the old paint is shiny gives the new coat something to grab.
Caulk the gaps. Where trim meets wall, where baseboard meets the floor. A thin bead of paintable caulk, smoothed with a wet finger, is the single cheapest thing that makes a room look finished.
Tape and cover. Press the tape edge down hard with a putty knife.

Do you actually need primer

Not always, and the paint companies would rather you did not know that. You need primer when:

You are painting bare drywall or new patches. Spackle drinks paint, and unprimed patches show through as dull spots. This is called flashing and it is the most common DIY complaint we hear.
You are going from a dark color to a light one. Use a primer tinted toward your new color and you will save a coat.
There is a stain. Water rings, smoke, marker, or knots in wood need a shellac based primer like Zinsser B-I-N. A regular latex primer will not hold them back, and the stain will come back through weeks later.

If you are putting a similar color over a sound painted wall, a quality paint handles it in two coats and you can skip the separate primer.

Picking a sheen

Sheen matters more than people expect. It changes how the color reads and how the wall wears.

Flat or matte: ceilings, and adult bedrooms with good walls. Hides imperfections better than anything else. Does not clean well.
Eggshell: the default for bedrooms and living rooms. Slight softness, forgiving on imperfect walls, wipes down.
Satin: hallways, kids rooms, laundry, kitchens. Takes hands and scuffs.
Semi-gloss: trim, doors, and bathrooms. Sheds moisture and takes a scrub.
High gloss: rarely, and only on trim or a door you want to be the loudest thing in the room. It shows every flaw underneath it.

One warning about flat: it looks beautiful in a photo and it is miserable in a hallway. Every hand mark stays.

The order to work in

Ceiling, then walls, then trim. Gravity is the reason. Anything you splatter from the ceiling lands on walls you have not painted yet, and anything you get on the trim gets covered when the trim goes last.

Do not skip cutting in the ceiling line just because you plan to be careful with the roller. You will not be.

Cutting in and rolling

Cut in the edges of one wall, then immediately roll that wall while the cut line is still wet. Cutting in the whole room first and then rolling is the classic mistake: the cut lines dry, and where the dry brushed paint meets the wet rolled paint you get a visible band around the room. Painters call it hatbanding, and once you know it exists you will see it in half the rooms you walk into.

Load the roller properly. Not dripping, but not nearly dry either. Roll in sections about three feet wide, going up first, then work back over it to spread. Keep a wet edge, which just means always rolling back into paint that is still wet. Then stop touching it. Rolling over paint that has started to set is what leaves texture and roller marks.

Two coats. Always. Even when the first one looks fine. The first coat is coverage and the second coat is the finish, and the difference in how the wall reflects light is obvious side by side. Give it four hours between coats, longer on a humid Tennessee summer day.

What usually goes wrong

Paint bled under the tape

The tape edge was not sealed. Before your color goes on, run a thin coat of whatever is already on the wall along the tape line and let it dry. Now anything that bleeds under is the old color going into the old color. Then pull the tape while the last coat is still slightly wet, at a shallow angle back on itself.

There is a band around the edges of the room

Hatbanding, from the section above. Cut and roll wall by wall instead of room by room. If it has already happened, a full extra coat rolled edge to edge is usually the only fix.

The patches show through

Flashing. The patch absorbed the paint differently than the wall around it. Spot prime every patch, let it dry, then paint. If you are already two coats in, prime the spots and do one more full coat, not just a dab on each patch.

The stain came back

Latex primer will not hold a water stain or smoke. Shellac based primer will. This is the one place we tell people not to economise.

It is peeling in the bathroom

Almost always moisture with nowhere to go, plus a flat paint that was never meant to be there. Run the fan, fix the sheen, and if it is already peeling you have to scrape it back to something sound first. Painting over peeling paint just gives you thicker peeling paint.

Paint brands worth the money

The paint is the cheapest part of a paint job. The expensive part is your Saturday, or our labor. That is the whole argument for buying good paint.

Benjamin Moore. Expensive, and worth it. Regal Select is the one we reach for most: it covers in fewer coats, it levels out so roller texture disappears as it dries, and it holds its color for years. Aura costs more again and is the one to use for deep, saturated colors, which are exactly the colors that fail on cheap paint.
Sherwin-Williams. Duration and Emerald are both genuinely good and comparable. Their stores are everywhere around here, and Emerald is our pick for bathrooms.
Behr, from Home Depot. The honest budget answer. Marquee and Ultra are respectable, they are easy to get on a Sunday, and if the budget is the constraint this is not a bad place to land.

What we would steer you away from is the cheapest contractor grade paint on the shelf. It goes on thin, needs a third coat, and scuffs off a hallway wall within a year. You did not save anything.

When it is worth calling somebody

Painting one bedroom is a good weekend. The jobs where people usually call us are the ones where the ladder gets involved or the finish has to be perfect: two story foyers and stairwells, ceilings, cabinets and trim where brush marks show, anything with lead era paint in an older home, and whole house repaints where doing it yourself means living in a construction site for a month.

If that is where you have landed, we do interior and exterior painting across Middle Tennessee, and there is a Color Studio on that page where you can preview real Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams colors on a wall before you commit to anything. You can also see rooms we have actually painted.

Painting 101: how to paint a room properly