To Paint or Not To Paint? A Guide For Painting Your Apartment

If allowed by your lease, painting your apartment is a great way for your new apartment to really express your true personality. Not all rooms have to be white, and a little color can liven up any room, be it the bedroom, living room, or kitchen. Outside of making sure your apartment stays clean and uncluttered, a fresh coat of paint serves as one of the most effective ways to truly brighten up any living space. In some cases, changing your room’s color can make the room even look bigger than before!

Now you could always pay some painters to come over and take care of anything, but why not roll up your sleeves and do it yourself (while saving some money)? Painting can be a breeze, so long as you follow these helpful hints.

Choose the Right Color (h2)

Obviously you’ll want to make sure to choose a color that feels warm and comforting, but you’ll probably want to make sure to check with the landlord once you’ve settled on a color. Keep in mind, some colors can actually lower the value of a property, and while you don’t have to worry about such matters as a renter, you’ll probably want to choose a color that won’t make your place harder to rent out when you move on to your next place. 

Consider carefully how the color will affect your environment. Some colors can help brighten a room, while others might not quite live up to your expectations. If you’re able to get samples, or just color swatches, put them up to the wall and try to envision it covering the whole space. You might find brown to be a nice, comforting color, for example, but then realize that an entirely brown room might give off a subconscious feel of being “dirty.” You’ll be looking at these walls for your entire time in the apartment, so make sure that it’s a shade you’ll truly enjoy.

Of course, the most important thing is to pick out a paint color that you feel represents your personality. So by all means, paint your walls your favorite color. Just maybe let your landlord know first if your favorite color happens to be neon pink. 

Get Your Gear

Now that you have your color picked up, you’ve probably gone and bought at least a few gallons of your preferred shade. Now it’s time to get your gear. You’ll need drop cloths, brushes, rollers, pans for the rollers, and painters tape. 

The pans will hold onto small amounts of paint at a time, which you’ll use with your rollers. The brushes will be used to cut in your edges. And of course the paint and drop cloths ensure you don’t get any paint somewhere it doesn’t belong (namely, anywhere that’s not on the walls). 

Now it’s time to paint.

Tape, Tape, and Tape Some More

Well not exactly. First, you will want to take your painter’s tape and place it on the wall everywhere there is an edge. Wherever the space you plan to paint meets an area you do not plan to paint, you’ll want to have tape there. That way, if you’re less than exact with your painting, you won’t have to worry about removing excess paint.

It might take a bit of time, but you’ll be glad you did the first time your brushwork slips a little bit. So remember, tape, tape, and tape. 

Place More Drop Cloths Than You Think You Need

Once you’ve taped up the whole room, you’ll want to place your drop cloths. Drop cloths are nothing more than cloth tarps that you can place over flooring and furniture that’s near the walls (you should move furniture away from the walls before you start painting, but cover them to be safe). 

Drop cloths are essential to the painting process. Or rather, they’re essential to making sure you don’t paint your walls as well as your floors. While painting, you’ll be using a roller for the vast majority of the surface area. Rollers, while great for painting large portions of your wall, also tend to spray out little droplets of paint when you use them. So make sure that you have drop cloths covering, if not the entire floor, at least all the area that is three to four feet away from the wall. After all, you put a lot of thought into how your room was decorated, but you probably didn’t envision flecks of paint all over your furniture when you first moved in. 

If you don’t have enough drop cloths to cover the whole floor during the entire paint job, you may move the tarp along the wall as you finish each section. Just remember to always keep the same side on the ground. The surface of your cloth will collect wet paint drops, so flipping it over should be avoided.

Prime, and Then Paint

If you’re painting a white room, you probably can ignore this step. But if not, you’ll want to first paint the room with a primer before getting the full job underway. Primer is usually white, and essentially creates a layer on the wall that will make it easier (once dried, of course) for paint to adhere. It also serves the benefit of making your paint show up better on the wall—if your room is, say, dark blue, that blue can absolutely show through your final paint job if you don’t prime first. 

If you decide against primer, you can still get the job done. It’ll just take longer—instead of primer and one or two coats of paint, you’ll find yourself trying to paint four or even five coats just to make sure your color truly shines through.

Cut in Before You Roll

“Cutting in” is what painters refer to as using a standard brush to paint in, by hand, all the spaces along the edges, where you’ve previously placed your tape. Now this process is going to be the most time-consuming part of the whole job. You thankfully don’t need to be too careful here, thanks to your tape, but you’ll be going along the floor, around outlets and window sills and, even more painstakingly, along the area where your wall meets your ceiling. 

When cutting in, it’s good to aim to get at least an inch of paint brushed onto the wall, though to be safe you’re better off getting about the width of a standard brush there. When you’re done you’ll have essentially a bunch of “lines” that you can “color in” when you get to rolling.

After you’ve cut in the room, it’s time for the easy part. Taking a roller (with an extension handle), pour paint into your pan, and just roll in the parts you haven’t cut in. You’ll want to roll as close to the edges as possible, but don’t get overzealous—after all, the reason you cut in was to make sure you wouldn’t risk the rollers getting on your molding or ceiling. 

Keep a Rag Handy

Throughout this process, make sure to keep a (if possible) slightly damp rag with you at all times. If you ever slip up and paint either molding or flooring that you don’t want painted, you’ll use that rag immediately clean up the paint before it has a chance to set. You hopefully won’t need to use this, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. After all, no one wants paint on their hardwood floors or carpets. 

Wait Before Removing Tape

You’ve done it! Your room has been painted! If you feel like you can still see some of the previous color seeping through, you’ll maybe want to go ahead and paint one more coat, but once that’s done you can take in the new look you’ve given your room.

Well, almost. There’s still one more thing left to do. Time to take off that pesky painter’s tape. Peeling it off while the paint remains wet could lead to smudges, smears, or paint getting where it’s not wanted. That’s why it’s best to wait until shortly after the paint has dried to take off the tape.

Peeling the tape off is actually a pretty gratifying feeling—it should come off smoothly, leaving a perfect line between the painted wall and the area the tape was covering. But it’s gratifying for another reason too. Once that’s been done, your new room is officially ready to show off! And nothing beats the satisfaction of transforming your living space in just a handful of short hours.

Guest Contributor: Jeff Good