How to repaint your bathroom
It’s a common problem when you move into your new house, that the paint in bath and shower rooms isn’t up to scratch. Bathroom paintwork will naturally start to peel after a period of time, especially around the top corners above you bath or shower. It normally starts to manifest from 2 to 5 years for bathrooms with regular daily use, depending on the quality of your paint and how well ventilated the room is. Heating, cooling and moisture is a potent force against even the most well prepared and painted surface.
The question is what types of products should you use to maximise the longevity of your finish, and then what process should you got through ensure the best results?
Let’s first think about the questions you should be asking before you start.
If you have children, or in some cases family members with mobility issues, your walls can either be used as a steadying aid or just a good place for small hands to be swiped across. Even if this is not the case, creating a high quality durable finish using quality paints will not only last longer, but be resilient to bumps, scrapes, and can take a washing down if necessary.
Measuring up the surface area for paining.
For those who have not stretched their mathematical brains since school and want to know how to find the area of coverage you need, a straightforward rectangular room, measure the width and height of the sections and multiply them together. This will give you the area of one wall, run the calculation for each section. If you have irregular shaped patches for painting and want a quick estimate, draw a rectangle around your area and do the same calculation.
Once you know the area you need to cater for, check the area against what your desired paint will cover. To take an example Farrow and Ball modern emulsion, a 2.5l tin of standard emulsion will cover approx 35 square meters. Check your specific paint for confirmation.
To do a proper job, you’ll need one coat of primer and two top coats of your chosen paint.
How much paint do I need for an average Bathroom?
An average sized bathroom in UK is suggested to be around 8ft (2.44m) x 6ft (1.83m) pretty small when think about the size of a bath being 5.5ft (1.7m), which doesn’t give a lot of clearance. The height of you room, is likely to be in the region of 9ft (2.75m). A total area of 252 sq ft or just under 24sq m.
Now lets consider that your bathroom won’t all be painted, wall coverage is reduced by the bath, sink, toilet, door and often some tiling. So the average bathroom will likely only need 2/3s of the total wall area. This means our estimate is 168sq ft or 16 sq m of paint required. (indicative only, always measure your room before buying your paint)
How much will it cost to paint your bathroom?
If 2.5l of paint gets you 35 sq meters you will should be okay with for two coats at 16 sq meter coverage. The cost of paint can anywhere from £25 to in excess £50 for 2.5l, the Farrow and Ball modern emulsion mentioned earlier is currently retailing at £50 or £27 for 0.75l. Primer is costing £36 for 2.5l. An average bathroom should cost £86 for your paints + £10 should get you a set of rollers and a tray from Argos.
Preparing your walls
Its always advisable to sand back the top surface and then give the walls a wash down – then let it dry overnight. This will provide a coarseness or tooth to the surface and allow your paint to stick better to the walls.
Masking tape is a must if you want a sharp finish around your edges. Take time to carefully tape up all edges between the painting area and the non painting areas.
When you get to this task you may start to identify problem areas that might be tricky to get your paint roller or brushes around, such as radiators. You should consider wrapping these up entirely, and tightly to avoid dabbing them with paint, and provide you flexibility to get behind them without worry (Try old carrier bags or old rags for this job). Alternatively you can bleed your radiators lock off the water flow and remove the radiator entirely to make the painting easier.
Finally, cover your floors with disused sheets and you are ready to begin painting.
Have your say
If you’ve got any pro tips that you would us to share on making you bathroom look exception, please get in touch, we love to share ideas or if you’ve had a go yourself please send in your photos.
If you are looking for help with your bathroom painting, why not give Volition Removals a call, we have many excellent handymen on our books that can help you out.
Just browsing, but considering moving house in London, let us know, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by our removal prices.
