How to paint the ceiling with your own hands

Gusevsky Andrey Anatolyevich

DIY ceiling paint

How to paint the ceiling with your own hands? This business is not so difficult. The overall impression of the entire room depends on the quality of the ceiling finishes - it should be even, smooth, without pits, tubercles and dark or yellow spots.

All work on painting ceilings should be carried out according to technology. Currently, water-based paint is confidently leading in the role of finishing. Today we’ll talk about how to properly paint the ceiling with our own hands. You can also find out a lot of useful additional information on the video in this article.

Varieties of water-based paints

DIY ceiling painting is done with quality material.

The building materials market offers three types of water-based paints:

• Silicate;
• Silicone;
• Latex (cm. Latex paint: how to work with it).

Attention: Despite the similar characteristics, each type of paint has some special qualities, which will be discussed later. The common advantage of all water-based paints is their complete harmlessness to human health and the almost complete absence of smell, which may be important for families with small children or people suffering from allergies.

Characteristics of silicate paint

This material has a number of its features. Perfect for use in a humid environment.

• It is absolutely not afraid of humidity, so it can be considered ideal for coating surfaces in any room.
• Finishing the ceilings of damp rooms with this paint, you need not worry that moisture will lead to the formation of mold on the ceiling - silicate paint is resistant to fungus infection, in contrast to thick latex.
• However, there is a slight drawback in it - the liquidish consistency of the paint does not allow it to be used to fill minor cracks on the surface, which, however, can be fixed by pre-priming the ceiling.

Characteristics of silicone paint

The main disadvantage of this type of paint is the high price, although, given all its advantages over other paints, one can consider the high cost to be quite logical.

So:

• Silicone paint can be used to paint damp ceilings - thanks to special additives, it is resistant to mold.
• It can fill cracks up to 2 mm.
• The film formed on the paint layer will serve as a barrier against all kinds of contamination.

That is, despite the high price, this paint can be considered an ideal coating for kitchen ceilings.

Latex paint specifications

Most often, consumers tend to order goods from this line of water-based paints, due to its versatility, ability to “breathe”, resistance to color loss and quick drying (before applying a second coat usually takes no more than 2 hours to dry).

Attention: A significant drawback of the paint is its instability to damage by all kinds of bacteria and fungi, which over time can manifest as mold on the ceilings of wet rooms.

• However, latex paints are subdivided into several subspecies with fairly narrow specializations, which are written on the package.Therefore, among them you can choose the best option for a specific purpose, for example, acrylic paints are suitable for processing the ceiling in the kitchen.
• Usually they are made in white, but to create the necessary composition they are tinted (see How to paint: choose an option).
• Ceiling paints are glossy and matte. Glossy paint emphasizes the surface relief, and matte is able to visually smooth out irregularities.
• To visually increase the height of the room, the color of the ceiling is recommended to choose several tones lighter than the color of the walls.

Room preparation

To simplify the painting of the ceiling and subsequent cleaning of the room, it is advisable to adhere to a certain procedure.

Doing the ceiling preparation

So:

• Cover the floor, window sills, furniture and heating appliances with polyethylene or unnecessary newspapers. To attach the paper layer, use low-adhesive tape, which is perfectly removable and does not "pull" the paint or the top layer on the wallpaper.
• If the ceiling space is separated from the walls by a polystyrene cornice, stick paper tape on the walls below this cornice, if you do not want to repaint the walls after painting the ceiling.
• Do the same with the riser of the heating system. Paper tape is freely removed without leaving any traces, only it will be necessary to do this until the paint has completely dried - as soon as it thickens.
• Install additional lighting for the ceiling so that during operation there is an opportunity to properly consider, correct all irregularities and evaluate the result. It is more advisable to take an energy-saving lamp with a white glow and a power of 15 W, attach it to the top of a high wooden tripod (right under the ceiling) together with a reflective lampshade.
• If necessary, such a lamp can be moved to another part of the work, so that in almost any direction of lighting to see the unevenness of the base and putty them, and during the painting of the ceiling - to see not painted areas.

Ceiling preparation before painting

Do-it-yourself ceiling for painting yourself. In the photo you can see it. After identifying defects and cracks, putty in all dents and cracks and allow them to dry for at least 12 hours (or even better - a day).

The following procedures are to be done:

• Sanding the ceiling with a sandpaper - "null" - you can only go through putty places if the entire ceiling was sanded earlier;
• Cleaning the surface from dust by a clean broom or brush or vacuum cleaner with a hair nozzle; do not skip this process, otherwise the paint (or soil) will adhere weakly to the dusty base;

The primer process should be discussed in more detail.

Soil application

The primer must be selected in strict accordance with the recommendations indicated by the paint manufacturers on the container with the material (see How to primer the ceiling: we understand in stages).

Apply the primer

Attention: Other compositions can serve poor service and, if the components are incompatible, provoke the appearance of stains, stains and even peeling of the paint, because of which you will have to redo all the work from scratch.

Quite often, as a primer, the manufacturer suggests using the paint itself, but diluted with a different amount of water. At the same time, it is important to strictly observe the proportions and dilute the paint with exactly that amount of water, which is recommended in the instructions for the paint containers.

The primer process is also desirable to perform in some sequence:

• Pour the paint into a dry container (it is most convenient to use a bucket), dilute with water and mix with a mixer. Using a round or middle brush-flute, paint over the entire perimeter of the ceiling with the capture of the cornices and thoroughly priming the corners, as well as the places around the heating pipe.If there are other parts on the ceiling that are difficult to reach with a roller, apply a primer with a brush there too. The rest of the surface can be treated with a roller.
• It is better to start the primer for the subsequent double staining (three-layer painting) from the corner of the wall with windows and then move on to the opposite corner. Treat the ceiling with wide strips from 70 to 100 cm, try to work quickly, without stopping, and impose the next lap strip while still moist with the previous one, following the so-called “wet edge rule”. To speed up the process, it is advisable to attract an assistant so that while one is processing the cornices and corners, the second is already rolling up the ceiling surface.
• Speed ​​of work is necessary to prevent polymerization of the paint, because of which the overlay of the second strip can tear off the previous layer from the base or lie on top of a thickened layer, which will appear as dark spots after drying. Therefore, the priming process should be completed in 20-25 minutes.
• If two-layer painting of the ceiling is supposed (single painting after the primer), the overlay of the primer strips should also be done from the wall with windows, but not to the opposite wall, but parallel to the windows so that the strips lie “across the world”. In this case, the direction of the finish layer (that is, the paint itself) will lie just in the direction of the light, which will make marks from brushes and rollers less noticeable.
• The number of layers depends on the quality of the paint - if the paint is good (usually these are expensive types of paints), dense, two-layer painting is sufficient, cheaper is usually applied in 3 layers.
• In order to save tools, the roller and brushes after priming with diluted paint can simply be squeezed, wrapped in a damp cloth and folded into a double cellophane bag. When using a commercially available primer, it is best to wash the tools first and then put them in a bag. But such safety measures came to us from a time of shortage, which has not been observed on the building materials market for a long time, so for subsequent work you can order a completely new product - this, by the way, will affect the quality of painting.

Stage of ceiling painting

Getting to the final stage of work - painting, once again read the instructions for using the paint. One of the important points when painting the ceiling is the time required to dry the primer, it is usually indicated on the can, and this recommendation should be strictly adhered to when painting the ceiling with your own hands.

Apply dye

Attention: If painting is carried out in several layers, then the application of the next layer should be done only after the previous one dries. If the ceiling is covered with dust during drying, it must be swept away with a clean brush or vacuum cleaner.

• Make sure that the base - the primer - is properly dried. Usually they try to apply the primer late in the evening, so that in the morning you can safely do painting.
• Stir the paint thoroughly with a mixer.
• If the manufacturer recommended dilution with water, it is better to transfer the paint from a can into a bucket and dilute with 5-10 percent water.
• The soft nozzle of the roller must be completely saturated with paint. To do this, soak it on all sides with paint and roll it several times along the trough, if there is no trough, use a clean piece of hardboard or linoleum. If the roller is not sufficiently saturated with paint, unpainted spots will remain on the surface, which will appear as dark spots after drying. Therefore, the procedure of "impregnation" should be done as often as possible.
• Apply a layer of paint with a roller according to the same principle as the primer - with strips transverse to the base, after painting the hard-to-reach spots and perimeter with a brush.
• Color strips should not be formed according to the type of shading, but in a zigzag fashion: roll a roller along the ceiling, drawing a large letter N, and then, without taking your hands off, “draw” the next lap from the first and so on to the end of the strip.
• To evaluate the result, it is useful to periodically inspect the stained places as if from the side, directing the light stream from the lamp to the desired area. Assistant in this case will not be amiss.
• To apply the third layer, you will have to wait for the paint to dry within 24 hours.
• At the end of work, a large amount of paint often remains in the trough or pallet, it can be drained back into the jar, having previously filtered through a nylon. To preserve paint, the jar must be tightly closed, and in order to avoid evaporation of moisture, turn the jar upside down several times.

Marriage elimination

When spots appear on the dried ceiling after a day, many try to paint over them with another thick layer of paint. But this will not fix the marriage, which is most likely associated with poor-quality preliminary putty.

• If the paint was applied evenly, with a capture of the “wet edge” and all the rules for choosing the consistency of the layers and the time of their drying were followed, there should be no spots. That is, their appearance nevertheless speaks of the irregularities of the ceiling itself, which is rather difficult to fix when the painting is completed.
• Although you can try to polish the entire ceiling with a fine sandpaper, remove the dust and paint over again.
• But if the “holes” are insignificant, you can put up with them for a while until the next grandiose repair of the ceiling, because an attempt to bring everything to proper form by simply painting over certain sections will lead only to an unsuccessful waste of materials.
• If perfectionism haunts you, get ready to redo the work from the beginning.

Painting the ceiling with water-based paint with your own hands is a simple matter at first glance. The main thing here is to make high-quality preparation of the base plane. For applying the dye, it is better to use a spray gun, then the layer will be applied most evenly. The price of the dye is not high and the instruction will help to do the job efficiently.