Use these valuable painting tips for your painting business or for your own home improvement projects. These are the little things that make a big difference in making your painting projects look their best. Most are severely overlooked by the general do-it-yourself homeowner.

1. Use Quality Paint – always use quality paint for your walls and woodwork. As a professional painter, I know the difference between using a great product vs. an average one. Never waste your labor on cheap paint. For example, good quality enamels will outshine the cheap ones for walls and woodwork. You can see the difference.

2. Buy Some Painting Tools – never be afraid of buying quality painting tools. After all, how else are you going to get the job done? Good painting tools will last a lifetime or the lifetime of your home even!

3. Prepping Between Coats – most people hate prep work. It is because they don’t know where to begin or to end. I will finish a ceiling, add one coat of paint or primer to the walls and add a primer coat to the woodwork before I go and fill any holes or cracks. Why? Because now you can see them all really good. There is no guesswork!

4. Use Color Paint Brochures For Interior/Exterior Color Coordinating – always use them, especially the exterior ones. Why? Because if you ever drive by certain homes you will see goofy houses with things like purple doors, odd colors on shutters and/or colors on houses that just don’t look normal.

That is why they have standardized exterior colors so you don’t make you home look like a clown’s house. After all, do you see any odd colors in exterior vinyl siding or shutters that you buy and install? See, they are all standardized colors.

5. White Ceilings – picture a living room or bedroom with a nice soft, flat white ceiling and a nice color on the walls. For living rooms, bedrooms, dinning rooms and hallways you want a dead flat finish on the ceiling. No "cheap apartment" glare on the eyes. For best results do the first coat using primer and on the second coat use "ceiling white".

For kitchens and bathrooms a low-luster, eggshell or satin finish works well for wash ability.

6. Paint With Fluorescent Light – when it comes to interior painting nothing beats natural sunlight. But on cloudy days you need extra light. I like to buy the $12 shop lights that have a cord and plug.

You can lean them in a corner or lay them down on the floor behind you somewhere safe out of the way. Why florescent light? Because other than natural sunlight, fluorescent light is a white light. It keep colors true. Incandescent lighting is yellowish and makes things look darker.

7. Filtering Your Paint – when you are painting and putting unused paint back in the can you will be surprised by how many contaminants can get into the paint.

Things like hair or fuzz, small dried chunks from wiping excess paint off your paintbrush, etc. There are plastic pan filters for latex paints. I will use one to filter a whole gallon as I pour it into my roller bucket prior to rolling out walls or ceilings.

This way you don’t have to stop during the rolling process to pick paint buggers off the wall or ceiling. The latex pan filter can be washed out in the sink after use. For alkyd or mineral-based enamels I use disposable paper cone filters.

You will be surprised how much smoother your new woodwork paint job will feel as you run your hand over it by doing simple things like filtering your paints and primers before painting.