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Utilize Flat Paint for Forgiveness

5:25
10:03
171.1K views

At 5:25 in

RESOLVE Ceiling Painting Problems!

What happens here

Flat paint is highly recommended for ceilings because its lack of sheen makes it excellent at concealing imperfections. Unlike satin or other glossier finishes, flat paint does not reflect light in a way that highlights uneven application, lap marks, or minor surface flaws. Using flat paint can prevent a lot of frustration, as it is much more forgiving of subtle variations in texture or thickness. When spraying, even with advanced tips and techniques, slight 'fingering' or 'tailing' (uneven spray patterns at the edges) can occur, but flat paint helps to mask these issues that would be glaringly obvious with shinier finishes. Additionally, using sprayer tips like Titan HEA (High Efficiency Airless) can further enhance the smooth finish by providing a very good feather on the edges, which, combined with flat paint, significantly reduces the appearance of spray imperfections. These tips also allow for operation at lower pressures, reducing overspray and making it easier to achieve a uniform coat without needing an extremely powerful pump.

Goal: Choose flat paint over other sheens like satin, as its non-reflective nature is more forgiving in hiding imperfections and application inconsistencies.

Tools and materials

  • Titan HEA Tips
  • Flat Paint

What they say

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want to go against that yeah I know you know I there's a situation one time in my career we were spraying ceilings and and I sprayed the ceiling it had a light source coming in out of one window and the only one window and I did with my eye all the rules according to lighting sprayed the ceiling and I sprayed it four times and I sprayed it one time didn't look good spray and then I can started changing directions trying to figure out and it was just really it came down to just spraying so it wasn't necessarily lighting it was just because it was being sprayed and the lap marks were just showing and then when we turned around and rolled it after we decided we're not gonna spray it for a fifth time it looked good and so you know sometimes just spraying isn't the the way that's gonna work I think sometimes you're just gonna have to determine what's gonna work best I mean first you're gonna start off with you know your lighting and then some of its convenience and speed also how fast you need to get the ceiling done yeah so I'm you can spray it faster than you can roll it yeah you can and really when it comes down to it lap marks are just shadows that are being cast across that ceiling and so you've got to figure out if you've got lap marks what's causing those little shadows do you have fingering on the tips of your gun you don't have enough pressure or your pumps not big enough or are you leaving a bunch of lap marks because you haven't laid out your your roller marks gently enough I'm you're you're pushing too hard and it's leaving creases on the ends of your roller so that's what you're trying to avoid and and you know using a flat paint too is going to save you a ton of heartache yeah that's ceiling that we sprayed four times that was a satin paint and now spraying ceilings with anything other than a flat can be very very frustrating and eventually when once we transition to flat paints we had a lot more success spraying flats and we did satin so we used to spray the ceilings and satins but like you touched on the the the fingering on or detailing some people call it on your tips if you're not just right if you get just a slight bit of fingering even if you're overlapping it's extremely heavy and you're saturating the ceiling those fingers will probably show up and in a certain lighting so I know that the titan hea tips give a really good feather on the edges so if you want to have really good success sprain you probably use a titan hea tip yeah that's…

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