How to Paint the Ceiling of a Room

Hi, I am Mark Osborne, the founder of Manor Works Painting and today were talking about how to paint the interior of a bedroom. Weve already finished cutting the ceiling, and were ready to move on to the next step in the painting process, the actual rolling of the ceiling. There are a variety of different rollers that can be used, but for this application, were going to be using whats called a nine-inch-frame, which is what I am holding here and weve applied whats called a half-inch nap. Nap is the portion that slides on top of the frame. They come in a variety of thicknesses, and you will need to find one that will work best for your application, but for most ceilings, like in this case, were going to be using half-inch nap because it can get a good amount of paint, but also allow us to achieve a smooth finish in the painting process.

Another thing you can use in addition to your roller is to use an adjustable rolling pole, which screws into the bottom of the handle, like such, and the nice thing about using an adjustable one is that it can adjust easily to allow you to roll the ceiling and then just shorten it to allow you to actually put the paint on the roller.

Now, that Ive showed you the various tools that we are going to use, let me explain a little bit about how were going to actually roll the ceiling. One key tip is to roll in the direction that is opposite of the main entrance or focal point of the room. In this case, the main entrance is behind me, so were actually going to be rolling against the main entrance. This is going to help minimize the appearance of roller or lap marks and give a more uniform appearance to the ceiling.

Notice when rolling that he rolls up to, and slightly over the cut line. You are not going to be able to roll directly to, in this case, the side of the wall, but he wants to get as close to the cut line as possible, to minimize something called picture framing.

Picture framing is something that happens when the line between area thats been cut and area that has been rolled becomes visible to the naked eye. The easiest way to correct the picture frame is to simply apply an additional coat of paint, as that will often even out the differences between those two applications. However, you do need to work quickly so that you can minimize the amount of time between cutting and the rolling application. Most modern paints allow that transition to blend in evenly, but I would not wait an excessive period of time between the time you spent cutting and the time you spent rolling because it will maximize, it is likelihood that will blend in uniformly.

The final tip when rolling, is to roll in one direction whenever possible, this will help minimize any lap marks. Now that we finished rolling the ceiling, we are ready to move on to the next step in the painting process, cutting the walls.