5 little known facts about house painting for homeowners

This Chinese New Year, you’ll probably want to get your house in shape. And the easiest way to do that is just to repaint, unless you want visiting relatives to pick out ceiling debris from their ba kwa. Before your rush into it though, here are few things you should know about house painting:

1. Go direct to the paint companies for the house painting service

Gone are the days when you needed to hire a bunch of contractors, argue about the price (they will explain that paint apparently costs more than the average NASA Mars mission), and worry about whether they can do the job. These days there’s an easy shortcut:

When you’re buying the paint from a brand, like Nippon or Dulux, just have them send a team over to also paint for you. You can get a whole five room flat professionally painted for around $1,500, by people certified by the company. This is better than finding your own contractors, for several reasons:

• If anything is damaged in the process (like your $10,000 Persian rug is now splotched white), it is claimed from the contractor’s insurance rather than your home owner’s insurance. The paint companies will work with legitimate contractors, who have valid insurance and are likely to be more responsible.
• You know you will get the paint you paid for (see below)
• You know you’ll get quality work. Some contractors are quite happy to get part-timers who can’t paint a fence, and leave you with walls that look like a kindergarten art project.

2. Yellow is the colour most likely to go wrong

If you are taking a risk with unknown contractors, try not to get them to paint yellow. Many shades of yellow are prone to streaking (you can see the direction of the brush strokes going everywhere, when light reflects off the walls).

We’re not chemists, but this is supposedly due to the pigmentation being “stretched”. Several paint companies will, of course, claim that this isn’t true of their yellow paint. But play it safe and leave yellow in the hands of professionals.

And if you’ve never painted your own walls before, but want to try to DIY it, you’d better be an undiscovered Van Gogh if you want to use yellow.

3. Painting white on untextured surfaces creates sterility

Have you ever looked inside an intensive care unit, and decided “wow, this is what my home should look like”? Do you find inspiration for home décor by looking in your son’s secondary school chemistry lab?

If so, then paint every flat surface white, and you’ll be a few plastic sheets away from making your living room or kitchen look like an operating theatre / morgue.

Contrary to what you see in magazines, simply painting everything white is not going to create that fancy Scandinavian effect. If walls are going to be stark white, they need to complemented by something warm. In the absence of wood, that means adding texture.

4. The shade will need to be altered based on the room’s lighting

The paint colour that you see will always come out a bit different, because of the room’s lighting. For example, a shade of white that seemed quite soft can end up looking like you’re staring into a floodlight, if used in a living room facing the sun.

In general, the more light the room receives the more the paint colour must be dimmed. White paint, for example, is best dimmed with greys if it’s in a room with a lot of sun.

This is why it’s worth getting a consultation (again, preferably from the paint company) before you pick a colour. Unless you can foresee how a colour will radiate or dampen based on the light, you could be disappointed after the house painting is done.

5. Check the receipts

If you are getting a new contractor to paint for you, check the receipts from the paints they buy. Some of the less ethical types will source for cheaper paints, which have the same general colour but are less durable (they will flake or peel more quickly).

You also want to make sure the contractor is buying the right kind of paint. Outdoor paints are meant to be tougher and more weather resistant, and contain substances that resists mould and mildew (and are strong enough to scrape chunks off your lungs and air passages over time). You can see on the receipt if this is what they’re buying.

House painting is the simplest way to raise rentability and property value

Sometimes, a new coat of paint is all it takes to make a 20-year-old condo look new. When trying to find a tenant, or trying to sell, it’s almost always worth paying for a new paint job.

If you’re wondering about price, a 1,400-square foot condo often costs about $1,500 to just over $2,200 for a complete paint job. This is the cheapest form of renovation you can do. If it results in a tenant signing on for a year, it has paid for itself many times over.