How to Touch up Interior Paint

Interior Painting Orlando, FL

Has the inevitable scratch or scrape appeared on your freshly painted wall? It is almost impossible to avoid some form of damage over the years, especially when kids, pets or furniture are in regular contact with the walls of your home. Perhaps it was an older paint job, but damage is still an eye sore and if the rest of the wall is in great shape, painting the entire wall or room seems like overkill. Fortunately, there are ways to touch up a damaged or scuffed wall. However, a certain finesse is required to have the final repair look nice and a few key tips are important to keep in mind when starting this type of job. After all, a botched repair can sometimes look worse than the small scratch that was there before!

Choose the Right Tools

It’s time to take a very careful look at the surface of your paint job. Was this paint job carried out using a roller or a brush? Was the paint dabbed on with a sponge to create a specific pattern? It is usually fairly simple to identify if a roller or brush was used, since a brush always leaves fine lines where the bristles left a trace in the paint. A smoother finish is almost always done with a roller. However, not all brushes and rollers are created equal. Some brushes have very fine bristles than can resemble a roller finish from a distance and some brushes use coarse bristles that tend to create a more artsy and vintage look. Rollers can be very fluffy or more flat. Choosing a roller as close to the one used originally is important if you want the repair to blend in nicely. Whether you are trying to find the perfect roller or brush, testing the chosen tool out on a sample piece of material is always a smart move. That way, you can see if you have misjudged the finish that the tool creates, and you will have a chance to look for the right tool. Otherwise, you will need to find a way to remove the paint you applied to the wall so that you can try again.

Be Mindful of the Finish

Paint comes is a large spectrum of finishes, from shiny and glossy to a perfectly matte and dull finish. Checking the sheen of the paint is important, especially in various lighting conditions, since matching the way the paint behaves in various lights can make the difference between a nice repair and a horrible one. For example, matte finishes are the most unforgiving when it comes to touch ups. If the repaired area is just slightly more or less shiny than the rest of the wall, it will be quite obvious. Repainting the whole wall is often necessary when the right level of matte cannot be accomplished. Shiny paints are more forgiving and sometimes a shiny paint is glossy enough for a scuff or scratch to simply rub off! It’s always worth a try to fix the repair with a simple clean rather than a repaint.

Plan in Advance

So many problems can be avoided when the homeowner plans for potential repairs in advance! It is always a great idea to save any leftover paint from your contractor and to make sure that you know if they used a roller or a brush. This way, you can show the contractor exactly what paint was used for the initial job and they can either help you find the same product again if you want to repaint the whole wall, or they can advise you regarding how to use the paint so that it matches the rest of your wall. Getting a color match from a paint store is always a more tedious way to go and nobody likes to waste time running around when a color isn’t quite right. However, is a paint job is quite old it is to be expected that even the saved paint won’t match. That is because paint can fade over time, which is especially true for reds and other bold colors. When faded paint needs to be repaired, it is best to call a contractor to see what they can do about the damage because this type of repair is often beyond the average person.

Overall, repainting a small part of your wall can really make it look like new again when a few important details are given an adequate amount of attention. Overlooking the tools that were used the first time around or neglecting to save paint that was leftover can really add more work to the job. Asking a contractor’s opinion is a great way to have the repair done in an efficient manner and if you are lucky, the scuff or scratch will come off with a little elbow grease instead of a complete paint job of the entire wall.

If you’d like to know more about our Orlando, FL painting company, feel free to contact us here or call us directly at 407.877.3210.