Have you been thinking about painting the exterior of your home? Should you paint with a brush and roller or use a sprayer? How much paint will you need to use? If you buy expensive, high-quality paint, it can be a big issue in deciding how much you will need and when you consider the whole house, it can make a difference of several hundred dollars.

Brushing & Rolling VS Spraying Exterior House Paint

If you want to hand-brush you can start the job faster. There’s also less time needed to tape and allows more attention to detail. You can have a thicker coat and you’ll use less paint per square foot. However, you’ll need to exert yourself more than spraying, but then you might be one of those people that likes a challenge! When you choose to apply paint to your home with a sprayer, you can make quick work of covering obstructions like pipes, wires and utility meters along with architectural details. When everything has been taped-up, it is much faster to spray than use a brush. The negative side of spraying paint on is that anything that is within the area of several feet will need to be covered.

How Much Paint Do I Need?

In general, you will end up using about three times more paint if you decide to spray rather than using a brush and you will most likely get a thinner coat. When paint is sprayed, it gets atomized into tiny droplets and therefore you’ll use more paint because many of these droplets will drift away. There isn’t much you can do to control this from happening and any paint left in the sprayer will need to be blown out and wasted. When brushing paint on you’ll use about 1 gallon of paint for every 400 square feet or more and when spraying, about 1 gallon of paint for every 150-200 square feet.

How to Use Less Paint When Spraying

1. Avoid painting in the wind because even wind at 5 mph is enough to blow sprayed paint away. If you paint on day that is windier, you can use up to 50% more paint.
2. Pump paint back into the sprayer. Instead of spraying the leftover paint into the air when you’re done, try and pump the paint back into the can. The amounts of paint left in the hose can add up.
3. Move closer to the surface being painted. The further away you stand from the surface the more paint that drifts away. This paint can be conserved if you stand closer. The downfall here is that you might get more drips if you stand too close. You will also get more paint sprayed back at you by standing closer.

Processional Painting Services in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Yonkers, Tarrytown, Bronxville & White Plains New York

Make sure the company you hire to paint your home has the experience to do the job right and uses the correct tools. The use of professional grade sprayers avoids having to thin the paint to keep it moving through the sprayer. One technique isn’t right for every project, so have New York Painting Services come out and look at the painting job you want done to determine which method will work best. Contact us today!