Interior Painting
Anyone can roll a wall. The difference between a paint job that looks new for a decade and one that looks patchy in a year happens before the first coat goes on.
What a proper interior paint job is
The finish coat is the last and shortest part of the work. Here is what comes first, and why each step exists.
- Protection. Floors covered, furniture moved and wrapped, fixtures and hardware removed rather than taped around.
- Patch and sand. Nail holes, dings, drywall cracks at the corners of doors and windows, and any texture repair. Sanded flat, because a patch you can feel is a patch you will see once the light hits it.
- Caulk. The joint where trim meets wall, and where casing meets casing. This is the single step that makes trim look sharp instead of tired, and it costs almost nothing but time.
- Spot priming. Every patch gets primed or it flashes, meaning it dries to a different sheen than the wall around it and shows as a dull halo. Water stains, smoke and marker need a stain-blocking primer, because they bleed through latex no matter how many coats you put on.
- Cutting in. Clean lines at the ceiling, corners and trim, by hand.
- Two coats. One coat is a touch-up, not a paint job, and it almost never covers evenly.
- Cleanup and walkthrough. Hardware back on, plates back on, and we walk the rooms with you before we pack up.
Sheen, and where each one belongs
Sheen is a practical decision that gets treated as an afterthought. It controls both how much light bounces and how much abuse the surface takes.
- Flat and matte on ceilings and low-traffic walls. It hides drywall texture and imperfection better than anything else. Modern matte paints clean far better than the flat paints people remember.
- Eggshell or satin on walls that get touched. Hallways, kitchens, kids' rooms, stairwells. Wipeable, and enough sheen to read as intentional.
- Semi-gloss or satin enamel on trim, doors and cabinets. Harder film, cleanable, and the contrast against a matte wall is what makes trim look crisp.
- Higher sheen shows more. On a wall with texture or old repairs, gloss will find every one of them. If you want a high sheen on a rough wall, budget for skimming it first.
Choosing colour without regretting it
A colour behaves completely differently depending on the light in the room. A north-facing DFW room stays cool all day. A west-facing one goes warm and heavy in the afternoon. Warm LED bulbs at 2700K and neutral ones at 4000K will make the same grey read beige or blue.
So do not choose off a chip. Paint large samples on two different walls in the room, leave them up for a couple of days, and look at them in the morning, in the afternoon and at night with the lights on. If the room is part of a larger project, our in-house designer will choose the palette against your floors, cabinets and furniture rather than in isolation.
What drives the price
Interior/exterior painting $3-$6 per sq ft. Where a job lands in that range comes down to the following.
- Scope. Walls only is one number. Walls, ceilings, trim and doors is a different one, and it is usually the better value because the crew is already in the room.
- Ceiling height. A two-storey entry or a vaulted great room needs staging, and staging is time.
- Wall condition. Repairs, texture matching and skim coating are priced as prep, not painting.
- Colour change severity. Going from a dark colour to a light one, or covering a strong red or navy, usually means a primer coat plus two finish coats.
- Number of colours. Every additional colour means additional cutting in and additional setup.
- Cabinets. A different job entirely, described below, and priced separately.
Cabinet painting is not wall painting
Refinishing kitchen or bathroom cabinets is the highest-value paint work in a house and the easiest to do badly. Cabinets get handled, greased and wiped every day, so a wall coating on them peels at the edges within a year.
Done properly it means degreasing every surface, scuff sanding, a bonding primer made for slick factory finishes, and a hard cabinet enamel or lacquer sprayed rather than brushed. Doors and drawer fronts come off and get sprayed flat so they level out with no brush marks, and hinges and hardware come off rather than get taped. It takes days, not an afternoon, and the result lasts.
If your boxes are solid and you like the layout, this is the cheapest way there is to get a kitchen that looks new. If they are swollen at the sink base, spend the money on new cabinetry instead. We will tell you which you have.
When you do not need us
- The walls are the right colour and just dirty. Most modern matte and eggshell finishes clean with a damp cloth and a little care. Try that first.
- One small room and you enjoy painting. A bedroom in an existing colour is a genuinely reasonable weekend project. Where we earn our fee is height, trim, cabinets, colour changes and rooms where the finish has to be perfect.
- The surface is failing. If paint is peeling, there is a moisture source or an adhesion problem underneath. Painting over it just buries it. Find it first.
- You are about to remodel the room. Paint last. Painting before demo, tile and trim means painting twice.
Why homeowners use us for paint
Because we are a remodeling and design firm, paint is rarely the whole conversation for us. We are already thinking about how the wall colour sits against your floors, your cabinets and the trim profile, and whether the room actually wants colour or wants an accent wall.
You get a dedicated project manager, a crew that is background checked and insured, a clean site each evening, and a 365-day workmanship warranty on the work.
Related services
- Custom accent walls when one wall should do more than change colour
- Exterior painting for the outside of the house
- Wallpaper installation for the rooms where pattern beats paint
- Interior design if choosing the palette is the part you are stuck on
Let's get it painted
Book a consultation and we will walk the rooms, tell you what the prep really needs, and quote it before anything starts.
Interior painting in McKinney, Plano, Frisco, Prosper, Dallas, Carrollton, Celina, Allen, Aubrey, Little Elm, The Colony, Anna, Fort Worth and the surrounding DFW metro.