Seven Time-Saving Painting Pointers for a Next Level Paint Job

This is the practical path through the project, including the choices that stayed. Wanting to try painting a room yourself? These 7 painting pointers will save you time and help you get a professional looking result!

I'm spending a good chunk of the weekend with a paint brush and roller in hand working on painting the kitchen and adjoining eat-in area and laundry room (which are part of the reno too) so I can keep things moving with the renovation and save a little money along the way. It's been almost 18 years since my husband and I first took a class at Home Depot about how to paint a room in preparation for painting our first daughter's nursery and the household has since painted our past three houses from top to bottom ourselves (other than hiring out for a few ceilings). Along the way The household has figured out a bunch of time-saving painting pointers that not only save me time and money but result in a killer paint job. They're too helpful not to share so that's exactly what I'm doing in today's post! (post includes some affiliate links; full disclosure available {here})

Clean Drywall Dust Before Painting with Your Swiffer

Whether you have new drywall that you're about to prime or you're getting ready to paint walls that are full of dust from spackling and sanding, cleaning some of that drywall dust off will help you get beautifully smooth walls. My weapon of choice that makes cleaning drywall dust easy? My Swiffer! You can use your Swiffer with the cleaning cloths that are made for it but since they get filled with dust quickly and they aren't exactly cheap, I just use my own cloths and change them out several times as I go around the room:

Microfiber cloths like {these} work best but if you don't have any (or if they're all dirty like mine were), old washcloths work too – just wrap them around the Swiffer and attach them like you would the regular Swiffer cleaning cloths. It saves so much time because there's no need to go up and down a ladder as you go around the room because the Swiffer can easily reach the top of your walls:

Use a Stand-alone LED Work Light

LED work lights weren't around when I first learned how to paint so I was taught to illuminate the walls that I was painting with a cheap clip-on light that you clip onto your ladder. The problem with a clip-on light is that it's easy to find yourself in the way of it, creating shadows on the wall and you tend to have to move it around a lot. A good LED work light that sits on the floor can illuminate a large area of wall so there's not nearly as much time spent fiddling with it to get good light. I have and love an LED work light similar to {this one} and use it with {this 15 foot cord} which is a nice length that keeps it from getting tangled and being in the way.

I also like that since it's LED, it's not only energy efficient but it doesn't generate nearly as much heat as traditional work lights that can get crazy hot and be a fire risk.

Remove Lint from Rollers with Painter's Tape Before Painting

There's nothing more annoying than rollering a wall with paint and then noticing that there are a ton of lint pieces from your roller sticking on the wall. This happened with the ceiling in our kitchen that someone rollered for me – I spent about 45 minutes lightly sanding zillions of spots with lint sticking off the ceiling – not fun! The first way to prevent this is to NOT use a cheap roller. Paying an extra couple of dollars for a good quality roller will get you a roller that sheds a lot less (I use {these} ⅜″ Purdy rollers for all of my walls).

My other tip is to wrap painter's tape around your entire roller before painting and then pull it off:

It pulls off any loose fuzzies/lint with it and significantly lessens the amount of lint that will end up in your paint!

Line Your Roller Tray with Aluminum Foil for Practical Clean-Up

Living with a septic system, I need to be careful about how much paint I rinse off into the sink so I prefer to use a disposable liner for my paint roller tray. You can buy disposable plastic roller tray liners at hardware stores but they're kind of annoying because of how much they move around while you're using them. One of the preferred easy and inexpensive painting pointers is to line your tray with aluminum foil (be sure to use an 18″ wide roll of foil). Cut off a piece that's quite a bit longer than your tray so you have enough foil to mold it to the inside of your tray and fold it down over all four edges of the tray to keep it in place. The only negative to the foil liner is that sometimes I get a small rip in the foil where a modest amount of paint escapes into the roller tray but it's easy to wipe out of the tray when I'm done with it.

You can do the same thing with Glad Press & Seal too!

Use a Telescoping Roller Frame

A telescoping roller frame is KEY to getting a paint rollering job done quickly and one of my most recommended pointers for painting walls, especially if you're a shorty like me! It saves so much time not having to go up and down a ladder and move a ladder around the room. The handle length can be set like that a typical roller or you can twist and extend it to almost double the length of it and reach the upper part of your walls. As you can tell by looking at my roller, it's been well loved and used for years and years so I don't have an exact match for it but it's very similar to {this extendable} roller frame.

Use the Best Ceiling Paint

Painting ceilings is SO not fun so you want to make sure you get it right the first time around and don't end up having to do any extra coats. My #1 ceiling painting tip is to make sure you have the best paint – in order to hide flaws in the ceiling and avoid roller marks, choose one with a flat sheen that has a touch of gray. The household has tried lots of different ceiling paints over the years and the preferred is Benjamin Moore's Muresco ceiling paint. It's the one paint that I never see roller marks with and that never needs more than two coats.

Store Paint Brushes and Rollers for the Next Day (or Week) in Baggies

The first several years that I painted, I rinsed my brushes and rollers out at the end of each day which took a lot of time and used a ton of water. A friend tipped me off about storing paint rollers for the next day in baggies and it works beautifully! I simply leave the roller on my roller frame and put it in a large baggie that I zip closed as far as I can. For paint brushes, I put their heads in a small baggie and again zip them closed as far as I can. Also I use plastic Solo cups to hold paint for edging/cutting in around rooms and I cover those with a baggie and place a rubber band over the top. I then place everything into the fridge (if it's a low VOC latex paint) because that slows down the drying process even further. I have everything tightly sealed so I haven't had issues with odor or the paint affecting taste of food in the refrigerator but everyone has different sensitivities and there is the potential for the release of odor with poor sealing so put paint in your fridge at your own risk 

The household has kept brushes and rollers like this for weeks before and have still been able to use them! I do always use high quality rollers and brushes so I can't say whether cheapies would hold up to this abuse as well or not.

That wraps up my time-saving pointers for painting! It would help if you DIY painters picked up a tip or two that you found helpful and that you'll share any pointers that you swear by too – I always love having new pointers and approaches to try!

For more painting pointers, be sure to look at these posts:

How to Prep Walls for Painting

How to Paint a Door

How to Paint Bathroom Cabinets

How to Paint Tile

Enjoy the rest of your weekend everyone!