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Address Sheen for Bathrooms and Kitchens

6:46
8:37
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At 6:46 in

What Is The Best Paint Sheen To Use: Flat, Satin, or Semigloss?

What happens here

For high-moisture areas like bathrooms and kitchens, the recommendation depends on ventilation and moisture levels. In modern homes with good ventilation, satin paint is usually sufficient for bathrooms and kitchens, as contemporary latex paints are durable and resistant to water. However, for older homes with poor ventilation, or if occupants take very long, steamy showers, a higher sheen like semi-gloss is preferable. This is because higher sheens are more resistant to water and less likely to 'milk' (turn cloudy or run unsightly) when exposed to excessive moisture, preventing mildew and unsightly water spots. For severe mildew problems, a mildecide additive can be incorporated into the paint. The speaker reiterates a personal preference against semi-gloss for aesthetic reasons, but acknowledges its functional benefit in high-humidity situations.

Goal: This step advises on paint sheens for high-moisture areas like bathrooms and kitchens, suggesting satin for well-ventilated spaces and higher sheens (semi-gloss) for areas with persistent humidity or mildew concerns.

Tools and materials

  • Mildecide additive

What they say

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But it's a really good product. I do get questions from uh customers occasionally or from some of my subscribers out there. What about kitchens and bathrooms? And bathrooms, if nowadays all the homes we're dealing with typically have, they're very well ventilated. And there's not a lot of moisture in the bathrooms. But if you do have customers that take long long showers, then there's going to be a lot of humidity in the bathroom. And the higher the sheen, the more likely it's going to repel water and it's going to last a lot longer and it's not going to get milky. Where if on the walls you get a lot of water on the walls, it starts to run. Lower sheen paints will what we call milk and you'll see those runs and it starts to look pretty unsightly or like water spots. And so you could jump up into a semi- gloss. It's very very rare because the paints and then technology in latex paints nowadays, even in your satin paints, they're very resistant to water and they're very durable. So all the bathrooms I paint, even my bathroom itself, they're painted with satin paints. But occasionally we'll run into a very old home that has no ventilation, had a mildew problem, and then we'll just bump that up into a semi- gloss paint and we'll add some milicide additive to it if there was any type of mildew problem. So that's for uh bathrooms, kitchens, kitchens are always typically well ventilated and don't need to be uh don't need to be painted with a semi- gloss paint. I just the colors people are choosing these days, the the colors just being extremely shiny. I just I I just personally don't like the look of a semi- gloss paint really anywhere. So, I steer away from it. So,

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