How Much Paint Primer To Use

White Primer and Paint Roller — iStock.com / Art_rich

Proper surface training is essential for a successful paint job, and primer is the key to expert surface preparation. Using the right type and amount of primer helps ensure a vivid, even color that lasts for years. Exactly how many coats of primer you lot need depends on what you lot're painting, just about paint jobs telephone call for one or ii coats.

Why the Right Amount of Primer Matters

Painter Using a Paint Roller — iStock.com / alessandroguerriero

Primer is made largely of solvent and resins along with some pigment. The resins seal porous surfaces to create a smoother surface that helps your paint encompass more evenly, adhere better, and last longer. It also limits the amount of pigment a surface absorbs, protecting the surface and reducing the amount of paint y'all need for an even terminate. Skipping the primer or using too little allows the surface to soak up too much paint, leaving you with slow, blotchy results.

Too much primer causes a different gear up of problems. Too many layers or an excessively thick layer increases the risk of the primer cracking, crazing, or chipping. It also takes longer to dry, slowing down your redecorating work. In the worst case scenario, it can damage drywall by causing it to bubble and pare.

Applying primer with a standard roller should give you good coverage. If the primer is dripping off your roller as you utilize it, you're using too much. You tin can await some of the old base of operations color to show through the dry primer, but the primer will prevent this color from bleeding into your new paint.

Information technology'southward every bit important to choose the correct blazon of primer for the surface y'all're painting and the type of paint you'll exist using. Get it wrong and you might still see stains, marks or prominent colour bleeding or blotchiness in your new pigment even later on applying the recommended corporeality of primer.

If the surface y'all're painting is heavily stained or has been stripped of wallpaper, leaving stain-causing glue behind, a stain-killing primer volition requite yous the best results. Some surfaces, such as masonry and physical, require a carve up sealer to be practical earlier the primer.

When to Utilise Ane Coat

A single glaze of primer is all you need if you're painting over white or very low-cal paint. A painted surface is already prepared to have another layer of pigment, and you won't accept to worry about the light base coat showing through the last coat.

If your old paint color is a medium-light tone, such as sky blue or mint green, and your new colour is white or very low-cal, start with a single layer of primer. If the onetime color shows through later this layer is dry, add together a second coat of primer.

Using a tinted primer is another option. By neutralizing the underlying colour, tinted primer can cutting the corporeality of primer you need from ii layers to one. Manufacturing plant tinted primer isn't always piece of cake to find, but most paint stores can tint a primer for you. Adding pigment reduces the primer's ability to exercise its job of creating a smooth surface for your new paint, though, then primer should never be tinted more than necessary.

Self-priming paint, as the name implies, doesn't require a primer, but there's no harm in using one coat.

When to Use Two Coats

Most unpainted surfaces require ii coats of primer. On a surface that'southward never been primed or painted, some areas are more porous than others. These areas will absorb pigment at different rates, leaving yous with a blotchy paint task.

Using two coats of primer solves this problem because the surface will blot nearly of the showtime glaze, while the 2nd coat finishes the work by filling in any remaining thin spots.

Wood – For bare wood that's never been painted, utilise ii coats of an oil- or water-based primer. Oil-based primers by and large perform better on bare wood, but water-based primers tin work well on smoothen softwood surfaces. For painted woods, use an oil-based primer.

Apply the start glaze, then let 12 to 24 hours of drying time for an oil-based primer or i to 2 hours for a water-based primer. When the first coat is dry out, employ the second if necessary. A second coat is almost always necessary because wood is highly porous, and few primers contain enough resins to fill the woods's pores and grain sufficiently with the showtime glaze.

If y'all choose a h2o-based primer, lightly sanding the woods after the commencement coat is dry helps create a smoother surface, merely let the primer dry for 24 hours before you practice then.

Medium-density fiberboard (MDF) – After sealing the edges, utilise ii or three coats of an oil-based primer. Avoid water-based primers, which tin roughen the fibers in a fashion that won't sand out. Because MDF doesn't absorb primer as chop-chop equally wood, allow at to the lowest degree 24 hours of drying time betwixt coats.

Drywall – Start with one coat of drywall primer-sealer. You'll get amend coverage with a high-build drywall primer, which is thicker than the standard formula. Afterward this layer dries, check for imperfections such as bumps and nicks too as sparse spots. You'll most likely need a second coat to comprehend these, but if you've used a high-build primer, you might find the wall is smooth enough to paint subsequently one coat.

Plaster – Considering plaster is decumbent to lime stains that tin bleed through your final coat of pigment, you'll need an oil-based stain-blocking primer for this surface. Apply one glaze, let it dry for 12 to 24 hours, then employ the second glaze.

Masonry – Start with i glaze of water-based latex primer, let it dry for one to 2 hours, and so apply another glaze if stains still show through. Masonry affected by efflorescence or mildew usually needs two coats. If the wall has prominent stains, use a stain-killing primer.

Concrete – Apply a total of two coats of water-based primer. Acrylic primer is popular for concrete, simply polyurethane and epoxy also work well.

Most primers are dry out to the affect inside a few hours, but for best results, wait at least eight hours before applying your last coat of paint over a water-based primer and 24 hours earlier painting over an oil-based primer.

With the right type of primer applied in the correct corporeality, you'll get true, even colour that lasts 5 years or longer. If yous're unsure about how many coats of primer you need for the surface you're painting, a paint store tin can advise you. Otherwise, get-go with i coat and check the surface subsequently information technology dries. If it still looks rough, porous or heavily colored, apply some other coat.