Here on the Gold Coast, painting ceilings has always been an issue in wet areas like bathrooms.

Painting your ceilings is one of the easiest jobs of internal painting. Here are some helpful hints.

Purchase Supplies, Bristol paints at Nerang is a great place to start. We use Tradex ceiling paint.

Buy good quality ceiling paint. Cheaper paint will wear out sooner and will require several coats to achieve a suitable look.
Buy a paint roller and frame with an extension handle and around 15mm nap sleve. You can’t roll ceilings without an extension handle. Use the shortest possible extension to reduce the pole’s weight. This extra weight will add strain on your arms, shoulders, and lower back
For textured ceilings, use a thick-nap roller around 22mm nap to get full coverage over bumps and irregularities. For a smooth drywall ceiling, use a roller with a shorter or smooth nap.

Preparation

Popped nails, crack lines in the ceiling, water damage, sagging gyprock can all be signs of more issues than you have potentially bargained for. You need a builder/plumber or plasterer to assist with these issues.
Wear shoes and clothes you can get dirty in. If you think removal of paint off the skin is a problem apply sunscreen to bare skin prior to rolling.
Clear the room and cover the floor and immovable furniture with dropsheetss. High-grade plastic dropsheets will not tear. Canvas dropsheetss cost a little more, but are reusable.Using a long broom, remove any cobwebs and dirt from the ceiling. Check if patching work is needed and perform it before painting. Allow the filler to dry and sand. Smooth the ceiling to an even texture with sand paper..

Use blue or green painter’s tape to tape off lights, other fixtures, and edges you don’t want to spill paint on. Taping the ceiling where it meets the wall isn’t necessary if you’re also painting the walls in the same color.
Fly droppings on the cornice and ceilings will need to be primed with a oil or shellac primer prior to applying ceiling flat.
Apply primer to ensure one coat of ceiling paint will suffice.

Cut-In

Use the best brush you can afford for your ceilings and walls. At the moment Wooster are making a supurb range of acrylic brushes. Around 2-3 inches of width is fine for the DIY painter.

Painting the Ceiling

Use a roller to apply ceiling paint while the cut-in line is still wet to prevent a visible line.
Work in small sections of about 3′ by 3′. Large areas increase the pole’s weight exponentially. Make a zigzag “W” pattern across your section. If right-handed, start at the right edge and work across the ceiling. Vice versa if left-handed. When the first coat dries, apply a second if necessary, starting with the cut-in line and finishing with the roller.

Ceilings are often painted white. For low ceilings, use light colors to evoke the feeling of space. Use darker colors for high ceilings to make them appear closer.

Good luck with repainting your ceilings. If you get stuck we always have a painter on the Gold Coast available to assist with our DIY programme if required or our Painter for a day.

Can you paint over moldy ceilings.

Here on the Gold Coast, painting ceilings has always been an issue in wet areas like bathrooms. For years we have only ever used very high quality low sheen paints or semi gloss in these kind of high moisture areas. The thing is, builders have never really stipulated the use of anything other than ceiling paint in bathrooms which due to its flat appearance soaks in moisture like chalk, hence all the trouble we now with mould, flakey paint and staining.

Mold and the discoloration it causes as it eats through porous painted surfaces. Mildew can show up in patches of green, brown, or black, and it can appear fuzzy, slimy, or even powdery. As mildew eats through the painted surface, it destroys the integrity of the paint film, allowing moisture to enter.

In some cases, mold can be difficult to discern from simple dirt. The easiest way to test a surface is to place a drop of common household bleach (5% sodium hypochlorite) on the suspect area. If the black stain starts to disappear it is mould, dirty marks will remain black.

Painting over mildew is only a temporary fix to an ongoing problem. The mold will continue to live and spread beneath the paint, and the mildew will eventually just bleed through. Some paints are formulated with mildew inhibitors, but an inhibitor is just that, it’s not a mould killer! The mould needs to be dealt with 100% first.

Warning: Do not add household cleaner or any other product with ammonia to the solution. Mixing chlorine bleach with ammonia will release toxic gases.