Touching Up Home Paint: Things You Must Know

Your beautifully painted wall is stained- what was earlier perfect now has a blemish, scuff, scrape or nick. No matter how small it is, the only thing you notice in your perfectly kept home is that spot staring back at you. You need to do something about it, but you want the simplest and fastest solution.

Can you touch up the paint, only by painting the blemish?

Unfortunately, in most cases the answer is no. There are a few situations where it can be done with satisfactory results, but usually the touched up spot won’t blend in, but rather look slightly different making the spot look even worse. So, why it is difficult to touch up paint? In what cases this method works and what can be done if it won’t work? In this blog post we will discuss these problems with solutions.

Why touching up paint is complicated?

The paint on your wall is 100% composed of dried solids, but the paint in the can contains only about 20-30% solids, with the remaining being water. When you paint the wall, you must let it dry and in the drying process the water is removed through both wicking and evaporation.
In touch up paint jobs, the final look is affected by wicking. Wicking refers to moisture being absorbed into the surface. The key problem is that wicking won’t occur at the same rate on a touch-up job as compared to wicking rate of the original top coat. It is almost impossible to recreate the exact the wicking rate, so the touch-up paint job will look slightly different in color than the original paint.
Another important factor is fading. Overtime the paint on your walls fades. Due to fading, even if you had the same paint color and the similar wicking rate, you couldn’t match the exact color of your wall.

Touch up possibilities

Here are a few cases in which you can perform a good touch up paint job.
Flat paint that has been recently painted: Flat finish is easier to work with, but you should try this touch up only if the painting was done recently. The first reason for success in this case is that the fading occurred on the walls is very limited. Also, the stored paint loses moisture over time, thus results to a different wicking rate. However, ensure that you use the exact same can of paint and apply smallest amount of paint on the affected area.
Small spots in inconspicuous locations: If the small imperfections are present in hard to notice area, then touch up can prove to be a nice decision. In this case, use the smallest amount of paint and apply just on the blemish with a fine brush.
What can be done if touch up is not the solution?
When touch up doesn’t work, you can repaint the wall from “break to break” which means to repaint the complete section of that wall. This will hide any slight color differences and as you just have to paint one wall that would be very less work.
If you are looking for home painters Gold Coast, then feel free to contact Repaint Pro Today.