So you’ve gone and had your house painted–or maybe you’re the one who did the painting–and it turns out that there’s uneven paint on your walls. Now if you hired professionals and they left that sort of shoddy work behind, then you need to contact them immediately and let them know that you’re not happy with the work that they did. Hopefully, they’ll be good enough to fix the problem–free of charge. If not, you might have to call in another team of professional painters who will do a better job with the painting project.
However, if you’re the one who accidentally and unfortunately painted your walls unevenly, you’ll probably have to roll up your sleeves and pitch in yourself to correct the problem. Alternately, you could contact professionals after the fact and see if they could smooth things out for you, it’s your choice!
But just how do you go about correcting this sort of thing? Well, we’re glad you asked! In this blog post, we’ll take you through several tips for fixing that uneven paint and making your home look incredible–the way you always wanted it to be.
If you’re dealing with an uneven paint problem, please keep reading to discover how to fix uneven paint on walls:
1. Sand down uneven layers of paint
When you want to fix uneven paint on walls, the biggest challenge is making the new coats of paint look as though they belong with the paint that was first (and wrongly) applied. Basically, you want your walls to look as though there was never a problem with uneven paint to begin with. In order to achieve this, one thing you may have to do is gently sand down the layers of paint that are near/surround where you need to apply more paint.
As long as the paint ‘sticks out’ less than a fourth of an inch, you can simply and gently sand away the layers of paint nearer the top (leaving the stuff nearer the bottom untouched). What you want to achieve is to leave no protruding layers that will mar the new paint being able to integrate with what you’ve already painted. Once the sanding is complete and you’re ready to paint, make sure to clean the wall of sanding debris before painting as usual!
2. Employ plaster on walls
Above, we said that if the paint was less than a fourth of an inch thick, you could simply sand the layers down to a manageable ‘height’. But what if the paint comes to more than a fourth of an inch? Well, then you’ll need to use some plaster to make the wall even enough to apply more paint. Make sure that you give the plaster time to dry thoroughly before sanding everything to a smooth finish in preparation for the paint job.
3. Utilize an elastomeric wall coating
Maybe you don’t want to bother with sanding and plastering. If so, then you can always use a special kind of paint, elastomeric wall coating, that will fill in the unevenness without a lot of fuss and bother. This is a more industrialized paint, but it will definitely fix the uneven paint on walls.
Instead of sanding, plastering, and doing all that time-consuming prepwork, you’ll be able to smoothly apply one coat of this paint and have your wall(s) looking great in no time! Do note that this paint is more expensive than regular, but for the amount of time saved, it could still be a great option for you.
4. Add more coats of regular paint
If your walls simply look a little patchy, there could be an even easier fix. Simply use the leftover paint to touch things up and smooth everything out. Use a roller to evenly distribute paint and catch those places that weren’t quite perfect the first time. Of course, if you have very thick layers of paint in some places and little to none in others (for whatever reason), you’ll probably need to look into the above options.
5. Skip sanding and plastering
Using regular paint and a roller can also be an acceptable option if you care more about the look of your walls than the feel of them. Now, sometimes a paint job can leave visibly thick areas on your wall–unsightly bumps and lumps. But sometimes, unless you went very close to the wall (or ran your hand over it), you wouldn’t be able to notice anything out of the ordinary.
If you’re just worried about getting a nice, solid, uniform paint job and you don’t care about the feel of it, go ahead and use the roller/regular paint for any unevenness, in a pinch.
6. Pay attention to the paint evenness
On the other hand, if you’re more of a perfectionist, one way to combat unevenness in your paint job is to catch drip and splatters before you apply another coat of paint. This will keep everything smooth and professional in appearance. Carefully, carefully scrape and sand away dried drips and other marks before applying a new coat.
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