Steps For Painting Over Dark Walls With A Light Color (2024)

FAQs

Steps For Painting Over Dark Walls With A Light Color? ›

When painting over dark walls with light paint colors, use a white primer. Using a primer will help to ensure that your color comes out true when dry, with no dark base color muting a light one or a light base color making it impossible to get bold color coverage.

When painting over dark walls with light paint colors, use a white primer. Using a primer will help to ensure that your color comes out true when dry, with no dark base color muting a light one or a light base color making it impossible to get bold color coverage.

You can find paints that require only one coat, but go for two coats to ensure your dark walls are fully hidden. Don't be discouraged if you need two coats, even when you have the best paint to cover dark walls.

Dark coloured walls can be brightened with a lighter colour paint, but there are a few things you should consider before jumping into this project. A primer or base coat is necessary to completely cover the darker colour and really make your wall look great.

Pick the best primer to cover dark paint

Choose white primer when going from dark to light, experts say, and gray when going from light to dark. Krista Zobel, an interior designer at TreHus in Minneapolis, offers up this special trick: Mix a little paint with the primer.

If You Are Going To Paint Over a Dark or Brightly Colored Previously Painted Wall. You will want to use 2-3 coats of primer to ensure there is a good bond between the new paint and the wall, and also to cover up any previous colors, especially if they are red, orange, or a strange outdated color.

You probably don't need a primer. If the current wall is smooth, clean and covered with the same type of paint (both are oil-based for example), you can head straight for the paint. You need to fill holes, spackle and sand*, maybe even cut a new piece of drywall in to the existing wall.

According to the paint experts, painting over bright and dark colors are always difficult and is not an easy task to cover in two coats of paint. There are few colors like red, green, blue, orange etc that are very difficult to cover and the task requires proper planning and careful preparation.

The hardest colors to paint over include dark colors like orange, red, green, and blue. These colors are too dark that they are hard to cover up. Most of the time, it is ideal that you remove the paint using a sandblaster or a paint stripper rather than painting over it.

Latex or water-based primers are extremely versatile, and they clean up easily with water so they're DIY-friendly to boot. They are great for most interior surfaces, including drywall, wood, and previously-painted surfaces. Plus, these primer types are less susceptible to peeling and cracking than oil-based primers.

What happens if you don't primer before painting? ›

Unpainted wood and drywall can pose huge adherence problems for coatings without primer. With fresh drywall, the substrate actually absorbs a coating really well, like a sponge. However, because it absorbs so well, without a primer coat, you'll experience uneven coverage, especially along drywall seams.

This is a great primer/sealer for most uses, it's always smart to test a small area of your project to insure its performance, but I've yet to find it to disappoint. I seldom find a need for a second coat of primer unless I'm covering black or a very dark stain.

Formulated with a thicker high hiding formula, KILZ 3 Premium Primer hides surface imperfections, prepares the surface better for painting and hides previous dark colors with ease.

Zinsser shellac seems to be the more heavy-duty option, as reviewers say it completely blocks troublesome odors in existing paints. However, reviewers also report the primer itself has an intense odor, which even wearing a mask while applying only mitigates so much.

It's important to use a white primer when painting over a dark color with a light one. If you were doing the opposite—painting over light colors with dark ones—you'd use a grey primer.

Generally, the only way to lighten previously applied colour in acrylic is to apply lighter colour over the top, and this is likely to mean (depending on the colours used) employing white - but while Zinc White, the transparent white available to us, is problematic to use in oil, it's quite safe in acrylic.

If you apply paint without applying a primer, there are a few things that can happen: The paint may not adhere properly to the surface, and may chip or peel off easily. The paint may not cover the surface evenly, and may show through the final coat.

With acrylic, similar to oil in this regard, lightest colors go on last. This helps give depth… starting from lowlights and working to highlights. Now if you are using acrylics like you would watercolor, highly diluted with water…then you can use a watercolor technique and can paint light to dark.