This is a fantastic question we often get regarding best practices for both residential single-family home painting and multi-residential painting projects. The answer depends on whether you are dealing with new installation, remodeling/repainting services, and how much trim there is. The involvement of the millworker also matters because the two scopes are related, and order of precedence on larger-scale multi-residential, commercial, and institutional projects is essential. Cooperation between your painter and your millworker is vital to effective and high-quality trim painting on new-build construction.
Millwork (trim) Already Installed? Paint the walls.
Renovations & Remodels
The millwork trim is already installed with the typical renovation and remodeling paintwork.
It is not cost-effective or recommended to remove trim prior to painting walls.
Generally speaking, if you are dealing with millwork, trim, casings, and baseboards already installed and want to paint a room, corridor, wall, or ceiling, then painting the walls and ceilings first makes more sense. This is because it is going to be easier to wrap up and cover up trim, moldings, casings, and baseboards than trying to prevent overspray on an entire wall.
If you are going with a spray-applied finish, covering trim, moldings, baseboards, and ceiling moldings is effective because there is a smaller surface area to protect.
Reduce Overspray and Adjacent Surface Damage
If you are painting the trim, molding, casings, baseboards, and ceiling moldings first, you must cover up the entire wall or floor portion where you think you could see overspray. This is especially the case if ceilings are a different color, or with carpet and wood flooring.
A typical overspray pattern for spray-applied painting on trim, casings, and moldings might be several feet. Complete reduction of overspray on floors, walls, and ceilings can be nearly impossible; depending on the aeration and environmental conditions in the room, the spray could carry and settle on adjacent surfaces.
The cleaning fees associated with overspray and damage to adjacent surfaces might not be worth it. It is allot of hard work to safely and effectively remove paint overspray from floors, appliances, cabinetry, or even furniture for example.
New-Build Construction - Painting Trim Before Installation
If trim, baseboard, casings, and moldings are not installed first, then it makes more sense to paint these first on the ground (controlled environment). This situation is typical in new-build construction, where the trim, casings, and moldings are handed over from the millworker to the painter for pre-installation finishing. Having millwork installed before painting is not always time-effective because of the required cover-up and adjacent surface protection.
Painting the walls first results in a high-quality, uniform finish throughout the wall.
You can effectively paint the wall surface without the trim, allowing even and consistent brush and roller application or spray patterns.
This results in a more uniform finish, with less potential for paint blotchiness or necessary touch-ups and large-scale corrections. After painting walls and ceilings is completed, touching up any minor corrections for the trim and adjoining surfaces is easy and necessary, with acclimation for wood trim.
If you think about it, stopping your painting process for trim, moldings, and casings every time will cost you time. There is no point in doubling your surface area application area to accommodate working around casings, moldings, baseboards, and trims.
Some overpainting is not an issue as long as the paint colors are not too drastically different. Subsequent painting for trim will cover up any errors in the original process.
Trim Shows Imperfections
Trim, moldings, casings, and baseboards with a semi-gloss finish tend to show more imperfections than eggshell or flat paints. This said, having the final painting on the trim done after the walls are painted is better practice because imperfections and the necessity of extraneous touch-up work can be avoided.
Likewise, painting the walls first makes more sense for millwork, casings, and baseboards that have not been installed. These should be painted on the ground in a temperature-controlled environment.
Conclusion
You can efficiently hit large swathes of walls and ceilings in a high-quality finish and generally avoid having to tape off trim, baseboards, and millwork. That said, once the trim is installed, you will still have to touch up after the fact. This could include wood filler, caulking, touch-up paint, sanding, and filling nail holes.
So in conclusion...
If you are renovating, remodeling, or repainting walls and ceilings, painting them first makes more sense. First, the ceiling trim, crown molding, and baseboards are easier to cover up and prevent overspray. Secondly, with remodeling work, having less surface protection and painter's tape will make your job all the more efficient.
If you are painting on a new build project, painting walls and ceilings first is better, then install your trim pre-painted on the ground, and touch-up as required.
For all your Winnipeg painting needs, Brilliant Colours Professional Painters provides professional, custom, and quality-oriented services perfect for homeowners, property managers, project managers, general contractors, and developers.
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