If you want to give your home a totally new look and feel, one of the best options is a full-house residential interior painting job. A repaint will quickly transform your home into a space that can feel almost new, while generally being far cheaper than major renovations or buying a lot of new interior decoration. It’s a way that almost anyone can afford to give their home a facelift.
Of course, there are some downsides to committing to residential interior painting. Painting is time-consuming, and labor-intensive if you’re doing it yourself. You’ll have to move furniture around, and in general, it will be somewhat disruptive to your life.
Ideally, the repaint should go as smoothly as possible, with as little upset to your day-to-day life as you can manage. That means planning! Prioritizing which rooms you paint, and when, can help make the entire process go a lot more smoothly.
There’s no one single way to paint a house, and everyone’s priorities will be their own. However, with over 15 years in business and hundreds of houses painted, we’ve got some suggestions on how to make the process more manageable.
Prioritizing Room Order When Doing Residential Interior Painting
In general, our recommendation is to start with your most-used rooms. These are the rooms you’ll want to finish up early on so that they can be put back in working order. So, our suggestion for the first room to paint is:
1 – Your bedrooms
Painting a house is tiring work, and you want to have your bedroom in working order as quickly as possible. Plus, you’ll probably also be dealing with some of the heaviest furniture when you paint your bedroom, such as the master bed. This is all stuff you’ll probably want to handle as soon as you can.
Keep in mind, it can take a day or two for paint fumes to fully disperse, so you may end up sleeping on the couch for a little longer than you’d like. That’s another reason to do the bedrooms before the living room – you need someplace to retreat to while your bedroom is unusable.
If you have children, do their bedroom(s) after yours. Giving them a cool new room to play in will hopefully keep them out of your hair while you do other rooms.
2 – The bathroom (if you only have one)
If your house only has a single bathroom, we’d highly recommend doing it very early in the process as well. It’s another room that sees constant use, so you want it restored to working order as quickly as possible. Fortunately, most bathrooms are small, so you should be able to see it finished in a day, plus maybe another day for the fumes to disperse.
If you have multiple bathrooms, the order in which you do them is a bit less important. You won’t have to worry about logistics as long as there’s at least one usable bathroom at all times.
Also, when you’re painting a house yourself, it can be a good idea to alternate between large difficult rooms and small easier rooms. This helps you pace yourself.
3 – The kitchen
Another room you’ll want to handle sooner, rather than later, is the kitchen. Some people even prefer to start here, especially those who like to do a lot of cooking. This can be a bit tedious since the kitchen has so many appliances in it that will have to be moved around so that you can get at the walls.
Remember that your kitchen will be completely unusable until it’s fully painted, and the paint has dried, so plan ahead. You’ll probably be eating a lot of takeout while doing the kitchen. Be careful not to leave any food that could spoil in a kitchen being painted, even in the trash. The fumes could potentially get trapped in the drying paint.
Another alternative is to plan meals around the use of your microwave, blender, and other smaller appliances that could be moved into another room for a couple of days.
4 – The living room
There are no two ways about it: in a typical house, repainting the living room will almost certainly be the biggest, most difficult, and most time-consuming part of the process. For this reason, most people tend to leave the living room off towards the end of the project, or sometimes even handle it last.
Having other rooms painted and finished means that you can reliably move furniture to other rooms, without worrying about disrupting the painting process. You’ll also likely end up spending a lot more time in your bedroom while the living room is being painted unless you have a den or other ‘hangout’ spot in the house. So that’s one more reason to get the bedrooms done before the living room.
Plus, you want to take your time with the living room. Guests will be seeing a lot of your living room, more than other areas in the home, so you want it looking great.
5 – Laundry rooms and other utility rooms
Finally, there are your little utility rooms like the laundry room. People typically save these for last, unless they really want to finish in the living room. Laundry rooms are small, like bathrooms, and won’t take long to paint. However, they can be a little more complicated due to the need to move your washer/dryer around to make room for the painting.
Don’t forget to do all your laundry before starting work on the laundry room! Once you’ve got it painted, you’ll want to wait at least a couple of days before putting any clothes in there. Paint fumes can easily get trapped in clothing, and don’t come out easily.
If Residential Interior Painting Sounds Like A Chore, Call C.E.T. Painting!
C.E.T. Painting has over fifteen years’ experience serving Westchester, NY, and surrounding areas with high-quality home painting services. If it’s time for your home to get a makeover, we’ll see it done to your complete satisfaction while making you as comfortable as possible.