Rolling Walls

H-1 This article will teach you how to roll your own walls, even if you have never done it before.

When you use a paint roller to paint your walls, the motion in your arms should be as smooth and rhythmic as using a vacuum cleaner. There will be a pushing and pulling action that you repeat as you move along the wall. Whenever possible, you want each stroke to be the full height of the wall. This skill is the foundation on which to build your painting game.

In this article we will discuss everything you need to know to roll the walls inside your house.

H2 – What are the best tools and materials to roll my walls?

H3 – Which Roller Sleeve Should I Use to Paint the Inside of my House?

A 9 inch all white woven, line free roller sleeve with a 1/2 inch nap is going to be the workhorse for most of your interior painting projects. A premium quality sleeve will cost about $5 and is well worth the money. If you are painting interior walls or ceilings that are textured you will likely want to use a sleeve with a 3/4” nap. Typically, anything thicker than a 3/4” nap will create way too many paint spatters. If you are rolling doors a 3/8” nap will give the best results.

An important item to note is that some manufacturers, such as Sherwin Williams, have extensively tested different roller sleeves with each of their paints for best results. In their stores you will often see a display indicating which sleeve is recommended for a particular paint. From my own experience, I suggest that you take their advice and go with the sleeve that they officially recommend for the paint that you will be using.

I once bought a pack of roller sleeves that were white with a blue spiral stripe. I used them to roll walls with a deep red paint. There was so much tint in the paint to achieve the deep color that the solids in the paint acted somewhat like the shag of a carpet with the ability to create patterns in the finish. In this case, the blue spiral stripe around the roller sleeve imparted a pattern into the dried paint film. Thankfully, it was easily fixed by changing to the recommended roller sleeve and rolling another coat.

There are many different types of roller sleeves out there. I’ve never been too happy with yellow woven sleeves for interior work as they tend to shed a lot of lint. There are also micro fiber sleeves that produce excellent results, however, for the beginner I recommend the white woven lint free. I once used a sleeve with a pile that looked like a heavy shag rug from the 70’s. It literally looked like a bunch of string attached to the plastic tube. The finish on the wall was incredible, but it spattered paint like an Amazon rain storm and so I never used it again.

H3 – What is the Best Kind of Roller Handle?

There is nothing like having the right tools for the job, and painting is no different in this regard. If you plan on doing a significant amount of painting you’ll be happy with a quality extension pole with a matching roller cage. In my own career I have used the same Wooster brand set up for 20 years. I have their extension poles in three different sizes: the 2’-4’, the 4’-8’, and the 8’-16’. Each size has two different styles. Wooster has two styles of poles. One style are the poles with a threaded tip for receiving a standard roller cage made by any other brand. They also have their proprietary Grip-tip that accepts the Wooster brand roller cage and locks it in place so that it does not come unscrewed from the pole while you are in the middle of rolling a wall. The nice thing about the quick release grip tip is that it’s a snap to remove the cage if you have to quickly roll in a tight area while trying to keep a wet edge in the paint film.

I’ve been happy with my Wooster set up and made a couple of repairs over the years so that I can keep it in service. Purdy also has a similar set up. One advantage with the Purdy extension pole is that their proprietary tip can use either their own Quick Connect roller cage or any standard threaded cage.

If you do buy an extendable roller pole, I recommend getting one of these two brands as they tend to function better and last longer. Generally they are available from paint stores. I have tried other brands over the years and have not been too happy with them.

As for the best size of roller pole to use, if you have a home with 8’-9 foot ceilings, you can paint everything except stairwells with a 2’-4’ pole. If you have 10’ ceilings you will need a 4’-8’ pole to comfortably reach the top of the taller walls. For hallways and closets that are too narrow to allow the use of the extension pole, you can either put out the extra money for a 1’-2’ pole, or just used a sawed off broom handle about 12” to 16” long.

Here is an insider’s secret. Most professional painters will have a sawed off broom handle in their van for rolling in tight spaces. I suspect the reason is that a nice 1’-2’ extendable pocket pole is literally the envy of every painter and they tend to disappear all too easily.

In fact, you don’t need to buy extension poles at all for your own residential paint job. If you are on a tight budget for your paint project, you can literally use a couple of broom handles for the whole thing. To prevent the roller cage from coming unscrewed from the threaded tip of the broom handle, just put a couple wraps of masking tape at the joint to hold the together. If you cut one foot off the end of a 5 foot broom handle you have both sizes that you need. From most paint stores you can buy a metal threaded tip that goes on the the piece you cut off, and presto you now have two threaded paint poles.

H3 – Putting the Sleeve on the Cage.

One thing you will notice is that there are so many different brands and styles or paint rollers out there, and they are not all designed to exact specifications. It’s important to make sure that your roller sleeve fits your cage properly or you may wind up with paint drips everywhere.

When you slide the sleeve onto the cage it should fit firmly, requiring some physical strain to remove it. If the sleeve fits loosely it may come off while you are rolling and land on the floor. That happened to me early in my career. When the sleeve gets loaded with paint it actually has some weight to it and is liable to fall off if you’re not careful.

After you slide the sleeve onto the cage, check the end where the little plastic cap is plugging the hole in the end of the sleeve. If you notice a gap there about the thickness of a credit card or greater that is likely a problem. Paint will work its way in there when you are loading the roller in the tray, and then it will dribble out when you are rolling the walls.

The way to fix this gap is to first remove the sleeve, next apply a couple of wraps of masking tape and then stuff the sleeve back onto the cage.

H3 – Does it Matter Whether I Plastic or a Metal Roller Tray?

Which type of paint roller tray to use is a debatable subject amongst painters. I personally prefer a plastic box shaped tray. The boxed skirt makes it stable on the floor so that it won’t tip accidentally. Also, the square edged ribs on the ramp actually grab the roller sleeve enough so that it rolls along the ramp. The metal trays that I used had small rounded ribs on the ramp that would not grab the roller sleeve, and the sleeve ended up sliding instead of rolling, which prevented me from loading the sleeve with paint.

The large plastic box tray is also large enough to allow the 9” roller to move around in. The smaller plastic trays with legs on one end are often a bit too narrow for a 9” roller, resulting in the end of the roller rubbing the sides of the tray and causing paint chunks to work their way into your finish.

In addition to a properly sized roller tray, you can buy a plastic cover that keeps dust out of the paint if you leave it over your lunch break. In fact, in most climates you can leave the paint and roller covered over night and simply resume rolling the next day. One night is the max. If you leave it for two nights the paint in the tray begins to skin over and the roller gets a bit crusty. Then you have a real mess to fix.

H3 – Do All Painters Use Drop Sheets and Tape?

Indeed, there are some instances in which a professional painter might skip the use of a drop sheet. Certainly if the floor is getting replaced anyways you might consider this. Other times, you might be rolling a small area and you can immediately wipe up the paint spatters from a hard surface. This is possible if you are practiced enough so that you produce only small paint spatters from rolling.

If you think there will actually be drips of paint, then a drop sheet is a must. For hard surfaces a vinyl backed drop sheet is preferred because it doesn’t slip on the hard surface. The vinyl coating has the added benefit of preventing paint spills from soaking through the drop sheet. When it comes to carpeted floors I like either a vinyl backed drop sheet or a fabric drop sheet. A fabric drop sheet tends to stay put a little better on carpet.

Most professional painters do not use a lot of tape to get straight lines, when they are brushing and rolling. One thing I have always used tape for is for catching paint spatters. After I cut in the wall along the tops of the baseboards, once the cutting in has dried I apply a strip of tape to the top of the baseboard to catch the little rain spatters.

To save money you can reuse the same strip of tape for the baseboards along every wall. One and a half inch tape is great for the tops of baseboards, because it sticks out far enough that when you push the drop sheet up against the baseboard the floor is completely protected from paint spatters.

H2 – How Do I Use a Paint Roller Properly?

H3 – What is the Proper Way to Load Paint Onto a Paint Roller?

Using a paint roller properly is simple when you master the basics. This process is called dipping and rolling.

To start with you will fill the reservoir in the paint tray until the paint is just below the ramp. When you load the roller you want to treat it a little bit like a baby that you take to the beach. You would never plunk the baby in the water and walk away. You swish its feet in the water and then set it back on the beach where it will be safe.

With a paint roller, never dunk it in the reservoir of paint and walk away. This will allow paint to seep in and fill up the inside of the roller sleeve. It will then dribble out when you go to use it. You never dunk it even briefly when loading the roller. This will get get paint on the roller cage which will also cause paint drips.

The goal is to get paint only on the sleeve. To accomplish this you need to place the sleeve on the ramp and roll it down just until it touches the paint in the reservoir. Then pick up the roller and plunk it back down on the ramp. You repeat this process several times. You travel by land to the paint, and by air back up the ramp, over and over again.

When starting with a new, dry roller sleeve, you’ll complete this cycle 10 or 20 times. Roll a bit on the wall, then repeat 10 or 20 more cycles on the ramp again, until the roller sleeve is saturated. Once the sleeve is saturated and you are into the rhythm of rolling, you’ll make about three trips down the ramp to load the sleeve for the next swath on the wall.

When you are ready to take the loaded sleeve to the wall, your last motion in the tray will be to roll down the ramp without dipping. You are now locked and loaded. Let’s roll!

H3 – Is There a Correct Pattern for Rolling the Paint Onto the Wall?

Amongst painters there is an understanding that we have some artistic license, and not all painters agree on how to do things. Some prefer to roll a square on the top half of the wall in front of you, and then roll the bottom square below that. Others prefer a W pattern.

The method I recommend is to roll about 24” wide from top to bottom each time you load up the roller. This is roughly two and a half times the length of your 9 inch roller sleeve. This width becomes narrower when you have 10’ ceilings.

Rolling top to bottom gives you the most consistency. Covering an area this size with each dip of the roller leaves the right amount of paint on the wall without having to overwork it.

When you have a roller sleeve that is correctly loaded with paint, and you are applying it to the right size of area on the wall, you can hear it in the sound of the roller. It should sound wet, somewhat like the sound of a car tire on a rainy day.

Each time that you load the roller and apply it to the wall, you will pass the roller in front of you, left to right (or vice versa) a total of three times. On the first pass you roll a diagonal line from near the bottom to near the top. Don’t start to close to the bottom because the first strip of paint is quite blobby.

On the second pass you roll straight up and down to even out the blobby diagonal strip. During this second pass you are not rolling all the way up or all the way down. You want to stay 4 inches away from the top and bottom.

On the third pass you roll all the way up and all the way down, overlapping the cutting in that you did with the brush. You will also continue rolling into the section that you rolled on the last dip to make sure that it is blended in.

Rolling all the way up means just until you cannot see the wall above the roller sleeve. Rolling all the way down means stopping 1.5” away from the baseboards. The baseboards should be loosely taped after cutting in, to catch the spatters.

One important indicator that you are on the right track is to notice how hard you are leaning into the roller pole. When you are rolling correctly, there should be very little pressure on the roller pole. You should almost be able to do it without squeezing the pole at all. If you find that you are working the roller hard, rather than simply rolling out the paint then likely you are applying the paint too thinly.

The faster you roll, the more spatter you will create. If you roll too slowly, the paint will set up before you can spread it out. What you want is a steady smooth pace. It’s not a race. You simply want to do it correctly the first time, rather than redoing it due to mistakes.

H3 – When Rolling a Wall, Should I Always Finish With a Downward Stroke?

There are times when you will want to finish each section of wall with a downward stroke. Sometimes the dried paint film will exhibit the same triangular pattern that you see in carpet when you vacuum it.

The time to check for this is after the first coat has dried, by looking down the wall at an angle. You are not looking for triangular patterns in the color. What you are trying to detect are triangular patterns in the sheen or the texture, since sheen and texture will both be exhibited after the wall is painted a uniform color.

If you are in doubt after the first coat, you can roll one wall a second coat and check it for the triangular pattern. After that if you are still in doubt then it is best to always finish with a downward stroke. This is called “laying off” the paint.

H3 – How Do I Properly Paint Around Light Switches and Plugs?

This is another area of debate amongst painters. For professional results I recommend the following.

Remove all of the plastic switch covers. If there is a ridge of paint you’ll need to sand it down lightly using 180 grit sand paper.
Use a dust brush to clean the wall behind the switch cover. You may even need to vacuum out the little electrical boxes so that your roller doesn’t pick up bits of dirt or drywall crumbs. If the walls are new drywall, you definitely will want to clean out all of the electrical boxes as they will be full of dust and drywall crumbs.
Apply a piece of masking tape to the top of all switches and plugs, so that it sticks out like the brim of a baseball cap. This is to protect it from falling paint spatters. You don’t want to run the roller right over electrical devices, and so there is no need to tape it up like it’s gift wrapped.
When you are cutting in, brush around all switches and plugs. Make sure to brush out the brush marks so that they are not heavy. Likely you will only have to do this once.
When you are rolling the walls, just roll around the electrical devices as systematically as you can.
If you have picture hooks and little nails, you may want to mark them with a little piece of green masking tape so that you notice them later and don’t run over them with the paint roller. That tends to pull big chunks of lint off the roller and it gets spread all over the wall. Yeah. I learned that one the hard way!
The most important thing to remember with plastic switch covers is to wait until the day after you finish painting before you reinstall them. Inevitably, if you put them back on the same day that you paint, they stick to the wall. This means you pull a nice chunk off the wall when you try and remove it for any reason down the road. OK. I learned that one the hard way, too!

H2 – Is The Paint Ready to Use Right Out OF The Can?

Ideally paint would always be ready to use when you bring it home from the paint store. In reality that is not always the case. Sometimes paint has been on the shelf a little longer than ideal. Other times, it may have slight impurities from manufacturing. Often, it will have a few dried chunks if you have opened the can before and poured some out.

The way to remedy this is to always have a couple of 1 gallon strainer bags and an empty one gallon can. Straining the paint is quite simple. You simply stretch the strainer bag into the empty can and pour at least half a gallon in.

Lift the bag of paint and let it flow into the can for 30 seconds. Then deftly hoist it over into the waiting paint tray where you will use the roller to squeegie out the last bit of paint through the bottom of the bag.

If you do any amount of painting, this is a process that you will want to become familiar with. I have been able to wash out strainer bags and reuse them a dozen times.

Having an empty one gallon can is so handy for painting. At the end of a job I use my brush to wipe out a can as much as possible and let it dry. You “can” too!