How To Paint a Living Room: Easy DIY Steps to Paint Your Living Room

Plan it all

From researching ideas on how to paint a living room to outlining colour scheme options, you need to plan it all. Planning your DIY journey begins with studying the space you’re painting. It is essential to understand your living room, the number of walls, the furniture and its placement, the windows and natural light within it. Based on that, you choose a colour scheme or colour combinations for your walls. You may even want to paint an accent wall in your living room. Keep in mind the positioning of these walls. Along with this, do not forget the fifth wall i.e the ceiling, It is one of the most important walls that add character and personality to your living room.

Once you have planned the above, you can create a small checklist like below:

• Plan your walls and furniture positioning
• Choose colour schemes and combinations
• Study the lighting and space
• Choose finishes for your walls

Opt for a colour scheme

Normally, the first answer to ‘how to paint a living room’ is to choose a colour scheme. It is one of the most important steps in your process. To begin with, start analysing the colour of your decor and the personality of your living room. Then choose between warm or cool tones or a mix of both for your colour scheme. It is very important to pull up reference images for your visualisation. Pinterest, fan decks, colour charts - these are perfect places for inspiration. Once you’ve found your inspiration and colour scheme, do not forget your finishes. Do you want a textured wall? A metallic or eggshell finish? An accent wall with motifs? All of these need to be part of your grand colour scheme and its elements. Here’s what your checklist in this stage should look like:

• Study the room, the furniture and its decor
• Find inspirations, references and colour palettes
• Choose the colour combination and accent wall design
• Choose the wall finishes

Pro-tip: Try swatches on your wall and look at swatches of finishes and textures to help you make your decisions wisely

Understand your tools

Your tools and material are as important as the colour combination and scheme you choose. There are a few basic tools every homeowner can purchase for their DIY project. Here’s a checklist for all homeowners that are planning their DIY living room painting project:

• Paint and its swatches
• Paint brushes
• Paint rollers
• Drop cloths
• Primers
• Masking Tape/Painter’s tape
• Paint finishes
• Paint trays
• Sandpaper
• Ladder

It is important to have necessary tools to get the paint right. Paint rollers and extension poles are important to reach ceilings and top corners. Drop cloths are important to safeguard your home and its furniture from paint and dust.

Prep your walls and space

Before you get to the painting phase, it is important to secure your space and prepare your walls. Securing your space means covering your furniture, art, electronics or shifting it. Cover immovable furniture with drop cloths. Once you have secured the space and moved away electronics, you begin to prepare your walls. While DIY is a raw and fun process, please prep yourself as well with gloves and appropriate, disposable clothing. The next step is to prep your walls. Let us look at the checklist outlined below:

• Secure your furniture and electronics
• Secure the space with drop cloths
• Prep yourself with appropriate clothing and painting gear
• Clean your walls and scrub off the dirt with sponges and detergent
• Use painter’s tape to mask areas like mouldings, trims, switchboards etc.
• Inspect your walls and fix areas with sandpaper
• Apply a primer to your walls

The last step is the most important step as the primer provides a smooth foundation to the coat of paint that is going to be applied next. Be sure to apply proper coats of primer to protect your walls.

Choose your technique and paint

Let your primer dry for at least 4-5 hours. You can then begin mixing your paint. If you’re a beginner DIY’er you can use a wooden stick to mix your paint. Otherwise, there are electrical mixers available in the market for frequent DIY’ers and professionals. Choose your tool, whether it’s a roller or a paint brush. Paint brushes help you with precision, corners and smaller spaces whereas rollers help you cover large expanses quickly. We recommend rollers for areas like ceilings and main walls and paint brushes for corners, trims, accessible areas etc. Let’s look at a few tips and tricks to choose your technique and begin painting your walls:

• Basic technique: Paint from ceiling to floor
• Choose brushes for precision and corners and rollers for larger spaces
• Paint your accent wall last and paint the adjacent walls first
• Always paint in shapes of W’s with rollers
• If you’ve chosen to paint a lighter colour on darker walls, include two coats of paint and one of primer
• For finishes, rollers are recommended with the same W coat to not leave imprints of the roller on your wall
• Paint along the mouldings and trim from top to bottom - one wall at a time
• Wait for walls to dry before your next coat

Pro-tip: Even if you’re unhappy half way through the process or have made some technical mistakes, you can hire professionals to cover it up quickly and save your project.

Let it dry

Now is the time to wait and see your results. Once the walls dry, if you feel you need an additional coat, go ahead and get back to painting. Ventilation and air also is an important aspect when it comes to drying of paints. Usually damp and humid days result in longer drying time whereas sunny days help with the drying time. You can use external sources for drying like fans and coolers. Sometimes, the finishes you’ve used may take over a night to dry and reflect. So it is important to wait patiently to see the results of your hard work. Take one last look at your walls for any painting mishaps, any corrections, lumps, untouched spots, uneven patches etc. Once you’re confident, let your walls and hands rest until the next day.

Clean up

Once you’re happy with the paint and how your walls look, it is the time to wrap up. Remove all the painter tapes carefully. Take off all the drop cloths carefully and clean up any unwanted paint splatters from surfaces, switchboards, furniture etc. Take care of your tools like brushes, trays and rollers by cleaning them with brush cleaners, detergent and soaking them overnight. Also remember to clean your space once you have moved back your electronics, furniture and artwork.

Now that you’ve reached the end of the process, you would have learnt new tricks on how to paint a living room and gained a lot more experience as a DIY painter. We hope our step-by-step procedure and tips showed you how to paint your living room of your dreams. For those who have enjoyed the DIY process and would love to do it for the rest of the house, check out these tips here.

However, for those who found this process a bit tedious and meticulous, you can always sit back, relax and hire a professional painter or professional painting services to get the job done. Either way, we are here to help you paint a beautiful home,