Choosing Rollers and Brushes for Your Paint Project
Choosing the right rollers and brushes before painting can get the job done faster with better results. Here are a few tips to help you get started.
Even if you have the best quality paint, using the wrong roller or brush for your project can waste time and money. By taking a moment to consider your tools, your paint job is going to get the most payback for your investment.
Natural-hair bristles are best used with oil-based paints, stains and varnishes while Synthetic bristles are better with water-based and latex paints. Synthetic bristles hold their shape and maintain stiffness no matter how much water they’re exposed to. A top quality polyester brush is well worth the initial cost—when cleaned and stored properly, they’ll keep painting smoothly for years to come.
Brush Sizes
When you’re buying any paintbrush, there are a few things to look out for:
The best part of using a roller is you can cover a lot more surface area in a lot less time. So, if you’ve got a large, flat area to paint like a wall or ceiling, rollers are a great option. As with brushes, when you’re painting with latex and water-based paints, make sure you use synthetic roller covers.
When you’re choosing a roller, just like brush sizes, you’ll want to think about the roller’s width:
Another important consideration when you’re shopping for rollers is the length of the nap, or the material that makes up the roller cover. Generally speaking, you should paint smooth surfaces with a short nap, and rougher surfaces—like stucco, brick and masonry—with longer nap so those fibers really get the paint into every nook and cranny. That’s going to save you time.
Gloss and semi-gloss paints go on better with short-nap rollers because these tend to generate less foam and fewer bubbles when you’re rolling the paint out.
When you’re buying any paint roller, as with brushes, you’ll want to pay attention to a few things:
It’s an extra step in your DIY project, but choosing the right tools can get the job done faster with higher-quality coverage and a better finish.