5 Simple Ways to Refresh a Room with Paint
You do not always need a full renovation to give a room a fresh new look. Sometimes, a simple change of paint can make a big difference.
Here are five easy ways to refresh your space. Most of them are a weekend job rather than a building project.
1. Freshen up the walls
A new coat of paint can make tired or marked walls look clean and bright again. Scuffs, old picture hooks and years of fingerprints all disappear under one good coat.
The trick is what happens before the paint. Fill the dents, sand them flat, and wipe the dust off. Paint does not hide a bumpy wall. It shows it up.
If the colour is staying much the same, one coat is often enough. Going light over a dark wall, plan for two.
2. Add a feature wall
Using a different colour on one wall can add character without changing the whole room.
Pick the wall your eye lands on when you walk in. Usually that is the one behind the sofa or the bed. Chimney breasts work well too, because they already stand out.
It is also a cheap way to try a bold colour. If you are tired of it in a year, it is one wall to put back.
3. Refresh the woodwork
Freshly painted doors, skirting boards and window frames can make the entire room feel more finished.
This is the part people skip, and it is the part that shows. Clean white skirting against a fresh wall makes a room look sharper even when nothing else has changed.
Sand it, fill any gaps along the top edge, then paint. Satin and eggshell are more forgiving than gloss if the wood is not perfectly smooth.
4. Try a new colour
Changing the colour scheme can completely alter the feel of a room, whether you want something lighter, warmer or more modern.
Buy a tester pot before you commit. Paint a patch on two different walls and look at it in the morning, in the afternoon, and with the lights on. Colours move a surprising amount through the day.
Which way the room faces matters too. North-facing rooms pull the warmth out of a colour. South-facing rooms push it the other way.
5. Do not forget the ceiling
A freshly painted ceiling can make the whole room look cleaner and brighter.
Ceilings yellow slowly, so you rarely notice until a fresh white goes up next to the old one. Then it is obvious.
Do the ceiling first, before the walls. Anything you splash gets covered later, instead of landing on a finish you have just done.
Where to start
If you only take one thing from this list, take the prep. Filling, sanding, masking and covering the floor is the dull half of the job, and it is the half that decides how the finish looks.
Then work from the top down: ceiling, walls, woodwork. That order keeps every drip landing on something you have not painted yet.
At Pixie Painting, we enjoy helping clients give tired spaces a new lease of life. Whether it is one room or a whole property, a fresh finish can make a real difference.
See some of our recent work in the Pixie Painting gallery →