How to Prepare For Painting Walls So You Have Less Mess

Preparing for painting walls is slightly different for interiors and exteriors. Overall, you need to clean the walls, inspect them for damages, and more. Find out what all needs to happen and some tips in the post below-

It’s All In The Prep Work

“The painting part is hard enough, but without proper prep it’s awful,” says David.

“What do you mean?” asks Stephanie. David thinks for a few moments before answering. “It’s kind of like trying to make a salad without cutting any of the ingredients up. Sure it’s a salad, but it doesn’t look good or work very well as a salad.”

Stephanie laughs for a bit. “What an analogy! Ok, so it seems like we need to learn how to prepare walls for painting before we start.” She gets out her phone and starts typing.

David walks over to see what she’s doing. “Looking it up on Google, huh? Smart move, hon, just like when we looked up exterior painting costs. Let’s see what we can find.”

After a few minutes of searching, here is what the couple finds:

How to Prepare for Painting Interior Walls

1. Wash walls with a water and trisodium phosphate mixture
2. Inspect walls for damages and repair them
3. Remove outlet and light switch covers
4. Put painter’s tape around places you don’t want the paint to get on
5. Move anything out of the room that you can
6. Move large objects to the center of the room and cover
7. Lay down tarps or drop cloths

Trisodium phosphate (TSP) is a simple cleanser that makes dirt and such easier to remove. When removing the outlet covers, you can put them in baggies to keep from losing the smaller pieces.

How to Prepare Exterior Walls for Painting

1. Spray a bio-degradable detergent onto the surface
2. Pressure wash home to remove dirt and such
3. Inspect walls for damage to paint and structure
4. Repair damages and remove any peeling paint

Check the Paint First

You’ll also want to check and see what kind of paint is on your walls. If it’s oil-based paint then you can paint any kind of paint over it. If it’s acrylic paint you won’t want to put an oil-based paint over it or it’ll crack and peel quickly.

Whatever you do, don’t paint with elastomeric paint. Elastomeric paint is bad for many reasons.