How to Paint Without Streaks

Source: From A Rock Solid - Tampa Handyman

One of the most economical and easiest ways to redecorate a room is to paint it. The new decor can be fixed quickly this way. However, sometimes the paint rollers may leave behind streaks, drips and unsightly lap marks which can mar the aesthetics of the room. Good news is, avoiding these unwanted marks is easy once a few techniques are kept in mind.

Before starting with the paint, the most preliminary step is to prepare the room by moving and covering furniture and flooring. For adjacent walls and trims that shouldn't be colored with the same wall color, low tack or blue painter's tape can be applied. Masking tape tends to be much less expensive but they might end up damaging the walls, trim and floors, doubling up the cost eventually. Once the room is prepared, the edges and the wall corners need to be cut in with a paintbrush. Paint needs to be applied about 3-4 inches wide so that the area is wide enough to cove the edges of the wall where the paint roller won't reach, ensuring that the roller is far enough away from the surrounding walls to prevent the roller from scraping and marking them. The paintbrush is to be loaded appropriately ensuring that it's not overloaded to the paint of dripping. The 1 to 2 feet long section along the edge of the wall should be painted. Then, the same distance needs to  be skipped ahead and then painted back towards the wet painted area. Thus one only needs to continue in this fashion, always painting for a dry area to a wet painted area.

Painted in proper direction is another key to eliminate lap marks. Instead of painting in straight line, up and down, which though appears to be natural can result in a lap-marked wall; a zigzag pattern should be used. 3-4 square feet of wall space can be covered at a time. Starting at a top section of the wall, the paint roller is to be pushed away as if one making a capital M on the wall. Then one should zigzag back over the area until it is filled in.

Thus done, the area below the first M needs to be painted next until the section of wall is completely painted down to the floor. One can then move up back to the top of the wall, next to the first painted section and begin again. This is to continue by painting from an unpainted area towards a painted section. To blend the areas together one needs to roll back over the completed wall section, once about four square areas are covered. One can now move to the next wall.

Finally, to obtain a streak-free trim paint, the same procedure as used for cutting in walls needs to be followed. From a dry area, 12-18 inch lengths should be painted back towards a wet painted length.