Touching up painted walls is not always easy. The paint touch-up process is labor intensive on larger projects, especially multi-residential and commercial buildings. It requires a host of rework that is usually unforeseen from a project management and cost perspective.
Touch-ups can be very costly for owners and building managers, but are essential to ensuring quality is maintained. Due to the nature of painting scopes and construction projects in general, assigning responsible parties for painting touch-ups can be difficult. One thing is clear: you will want a professional, well-versed painting contractor to take on paint touch-ups and correction scopes.
Wall Paint Inconsistencies
Paint inconsistencies on a portion of your wall can be a major annoyance. By viewing the wall in particular lights, such as evening or morning, we can find paint discoloration or disturbances in finishing. Once identified, you can attempt to re-paint the wall if you deem them annoying enough to your eye. Not all smudges or discolorations are that easily identifiable, so it is up to the painting contractor, the inspector, or you, to assess the wall for touch-ups.
The problem is that with paint corrections for walls, if you are trying to touch up a discolored or poorly finished surface, you’ll basically be looking at having the whole wall repainted. There is no easy way to properly touch up a wall with a large swathe of discoloration or poorly applied paint.
Whether the painter did not use a typical painting technique or was inconsistent with the finishing coat, where a portion of the wall is affected and shows badly in light at different times of day, it must be repainted entirely.
Trying to touch up just a small wall area will result in more rework, so repainting the whole surface is easiest and can ensure the touch-up is done correctly.
Small Touch-up Paint Services
More minor touch-ups for dings, chips, and flakes are reasonable. Acceptable brush applications for minor touch-ups are fine, as the damage is typically so small that minor touch-ups are all that is needed to bring the paint's surface back in line with the general color of the wall.
One guiding principle we see for painting wall surfaces is to view the wall from about a couple feet back. You don’t need to view the wall from literally 6” but a couple feet is fine, and this will help to ensure that the touch-ups performed are satisfactory.
Touch-ups for Casings, Baseboards, Millwork, and Crown Moldings
We find that millwork trim is the culprit for many paint touch-up works, to suit proper turnover and completion of painting projects. Touch-ups for millwork are often required because as the millwork acclimates, cracks develop between the adjoining trim, casings, and millwork pieces. This is natural with new millwork installations.
As a result, touch-ups may necessitate caulking or wood filler, along with detailed sanding work, to ensure that the trim is finished properly.
Turnover of touch-up painting work needs to be established as a process between millwork and the painting contractor. The painting contractor may not be wholly responsible for the sanding and pre-paint surface treatment for the wood trims and other millwork items. As a homeowner, you must understand the difference between the scopes of work, as scope delineation is key to both proper painting finish and happy trades.
Even if you are just renovating a small home, the distinction should be made to avoid scope gaps.
Photo Above: Paint touch-ups are a thorough process we take pride in, ensuring each project's unique painting scope is turned over to the highest degree of quality possible.
Ceiling Touch-ups
Ceiling touch-ups are another area where damage can frequently occur to the installation of various items like lights, sprinklers, fire alarm devices, and more. Where necessary, drywall repairs may be warranted, and blending the adjacent paint surfaces with the damaged area is critical.
Again, depending on the light in the room, the finish on the ceiling may necessitate repainting large swathes of paint. This is because the ceiling paint is typically a light color, reflecting the light from the surrounding outdoors. Minor touch-ups, if not done perfectly, like a wall, can become quite unsightly.
Even if the touch-up is perfectly color-matched, the application of the paint makes it difficult to ensure that light hits the surface uniformly throughout the ceiling/wall.
Outlets, Plugs etc.
When electricians install outlets, plugs, light switches, and fire alarm devices, there are often issues with the finishing of the drywall.
Trade error usually occurs, with over-cuts and damage to the surrounding drywall. Small drywall patches are fine with these items, with paint-touch-ups localized to the specific outlet/device. These small areas surrounding the outlets, or switch panels, or a thermostat for instance, are fine for minor touch-ups because of the way the human eye sees the surface with the existing disturbance from the item.
So a touch-up in the middle of the wall can cause issues with the show of the paint from a distance or in the right light. But touch-ups around outlets or light switches are fine typically.
It is essential to ensure that your tradesmen take care of finished surfaces. Shared working spaces in projects should be respected, to avoid unnecessary repainting.
Photo Above: Painting touch-ups during the overall painting scope are typical and are done generally throughout a project process but also at turnover.
Cleaning as an Alternative to Touch-ups
Sometimes, we notice scuffs and scrapes on walls, which can be problematic on most projects and home renovations. Rather than touch these up completely, an alternative can be utilize a cleaning pad, or professional cleaning services. While most cleaning companies can ensure your walls are clean, to actually ensure that the paint finish is not affected takes a light touch.
Taking time with cleaning to ensure that both the scuff/scrape is removed and the paint finish is not affected is difficult but possible.
Adequate drying time for the surface must be provided to ensure the paint finish is not affected. The affected area must also be re-inspected after the fact. Touch-ups should be done at project completion to avoid rework, as the goal is to turn over the product at the highest degree of quality.
Cabinet Touch-ups
Often, cabinets and millwork are damaged by overspray or from appliance or tiling scope installations. When this happens, finding the appropriate touch-up can be difficult.
Specific colors selected from manufacturers of these products ensure that the paint finish is kept consistent. But realistically, a touch-up on a finished cabinet or piece of millwork is not going to be at the same level as the original finish. Cabinets and millwork are often finished in a high-gloss or special finish, and matching the finish can be very difficult.
If your cabinets are finished from the millworker, touch-ups can be performed by that company.
Preparation Work for Paint Touch-Ups
Most surfaces, if damage is significant enough, will require thorough repair and preparation of the area. This could involve utilizing hand tools like paint scrapers, and sanding, or through the utilization solvents to further clean the area and prepare it for painting.
For example, with metal surfaces, we find that some coatings have to be removed in entirety to facilitate the application of a primer to suit the painting process to follow. This could be with the painting of a fire extinguisher cabinet, fire hose cabinet, or a sprinkler valve cabinet for instance.
Photo Above: Protection of adjacent surfaces, like the thermostat, or casings, baseboards, and trims is essential.
Cost Effectiveness for Paint Touch-ups
Most painting companies do not take the time to ensure that their work areas are fully completed prior to painting. For instance, trade damages from other trades on a project frequently are cause for concern, with extraneous paint touch-ups being needed to actually turn-over an area. This means that for us, as a professional painting contractor, providing dignified service for our clients, we need to assess our areas and work-scopes properly after painting, and then further after painting after other trades have come and go.
Unfortunately, most paint touch-ups are avoidable, but like so many things in this world, nothing is perfect, let alone construction sites and projects. With touch-ups, to minimize the re-work needed, we recommend general contractors and homeowners do their own painting inspections to assess the necessity for further unnecessary touch-ups.
Touch-up painting is a labor intensive process, where ultimately not much work is actually done, rather the process just ensures a seamless finish. It may have to be done over and over again until it is perfect or meets client expectations.
Conclusion
To properly touch-up walls requires different painting techniques. For small touch-ups, such as chips, flakes and dents, localized paint touch-up is adequate. But for major discolorations on walls, repainting of the entire wall may be warranted. This is so the uniformity of the surface of the wall is kept for the painting finish. The time needed to actually touch-up a wall properly in the capacity to effectively blend it with the surrounding paint may be about the same as just repainting portions of a wall.
On most multi-residential and commercial painting projects, spare materials (paint) are turned over to a client or project owner to ensure they have materials for touch-ups in the future. While small paint touch ups are typically successfully completed by maintenance staff, larger paint touch-ups or corrections typically need the services of a professional painting contractor.
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