Bathroom Painting Tips to Power Up your Painting

Even a warm winter tends to slow down the home improvement schedule for do-it-yourself and professional painters alike. One interior painting job that makes sense, and that’s pretty easy to complete, is that fresh look in a bath or powder room. It’s usually an inexpensive update, and our team of Matthews Painting professionals has a few ideas about how to make the most out of it.  Good news for our Goshen, Indiana and Columbia City, Indiana customers.

Laugh if you want to, but the first thing to do is go look at your bathroom. There’s a good chance that you use it so often that routine and familiarity mean you don’t even notice flaws anymore. The main bath is a busy room and it takes a lot of abuse, most obviously from moisture and humidity. So be sure that while you’re planning colors for the walls and ceiling, you’re looking at other features too.

For example, many older homes still have vintage baseboard heating registers – even when the heating, air conditioning and ductwork are new. These fixtures, subjected to years of your family’s showers and soaking, may show signs of finish damage or corrosion that are easily remedied with a fresh coat in a metallic or accent paint. That’s true for light fixtures, towel bars, shelves and even antique doorknobs. Taking a good look at the one room that you enter, leave, but never really hang out in is helpful in newer homes too.

Once you see the big picture, you’re ready to plan your project with some color choices, an idea of what tools you’ll need, and a checklist of smaller items like switchplate and outlet covers that are well worth the small investment. But how do you know what colors to go with, especially when baths are usually so small? It depends on how you want the space to feel, and how you plan to maintain it.

For some people, that means soothing tones to create a candlelit, bubble bath oasis. It’s a room where watercolor blues and greens have long been popular, but today’s palette offers more bold options in red, orange and purple than you might think. For people who want elegance, a choice in charcoal or brown offers that classic look, while a sunny yellow is always popular in the bath.

There are a few things that stay true no matter what your preference. Think about your natural light, because a room that’s both small and dark probably isn’t a place to try a heavy or overwhelming color. Think about your ceiling for the same reason – although the bath is a place where you might want to get creative, and try a light texture or even a paintable wallpaper that delivers a faux-surface look. If you are considering paper in the bath, remember that you’ll need to seal it with a high-quality product. We’re happy to help you get that covered, and our expertise is available if you need to remove old paper too.

The trend in trimwork right now is bright white, and that’s most often true in the bath. That bright white – in fact, almost anywhere in a bathroom no matter the color – needs to be cleaned more often than most surfaces in your home. Choosing a semigloss or satin finish is one key to keeping the sparkle in your updated bath, and some are self-priming if you’re not making a radical color change and your surfaces are in decent condition. Consider using a mildew-resistant product that better handles the moisture too.

Finally, be sure to prep the surface well. That’s true for any paint project, but absolutely so in the bath. You’ll want to ensure that those walls are clean, smooth and dry before you paint, and you’ll also have to use another room in the house or wait for paint to dry before taking that next shower! It will be worth the wait, and the small investment, to have a bath that’s beautiful once again.

Matthews Painting has now expanded our interior and exterior wall, ceiling, trim, door, window and kitchen cabinet painting and staining, wallpaper removal, drywall repair, deck staining and sealing and log Home staining and sealing into the Goshen, Indiana, Columbia City Indiana, Warsaw, Winona Lake, Leesburg, Syracuse, Indiana, North Webster, North Manchester, Lake Wawasee and Lake Tippecanoe areas.