This year as part of our list of home updates and maintenance, we painted both bathrooms.
The bathrooms were well and truly in need of a paint because they hadn’t been painted since we moved in.
Our bathrooms have kept well for a 15 year old home. But the paint had started to peel around the doors and I wanted a new feature wall colour in the main bathroom.
If you’re looking to paint your bathrooms, I thought I’d share some tips. You could outsource to a professional house painter, but we decided to tackle the job ourselves.
6 Bathroom Painting Tips
1. Clean all the bathroom walls
Bathroom walls are notorious for harboring surface mould and mildew. You don’t want to be painting over this.
Instead give all the plaster walls a thorough clean with sugar soap – ceiling included.
To tackle mildew – you can use vinegar and water. Allow the walls to completely dry before you attempt to paint.
Often dust and cobwebs are present on the ceiling corners and around the bathroom exhaust fan. Be sure to clean these thoroughly to prevent them getting embedded in the paint.
2. Choose white to brighten
If you’re planning to brighten the bathroom, white paint is the best. We opted for this in both our bathrooms and chose a navy feature wall to cover the no-longer-trendy plum wall in the main bathroom.
If you decide to paint the walls a darker colour – talk with your local paint supplier on if the colour choice is possible. We weren’t able to tint the bathroom paint navy and opted for a high quality interior wall paint with mould-resistance.
Darker walls also show precipitation and water splashes easily. We have this on our navy wall but I just have to commit to a weekly wipe down to keep it looking streak free.
3. Choose a Satin or Semi-Gloss Paint with Mould-Resistant Properties
Due to the humidity levels in a bathroom, it’s recommended to use a satin or semi-gloss paint suited for bathrooms on the walls to aid in easy cleaning. Mould and moisture resistant properties in paint can prevent the growth of mould and mildew on the walls.
4. Use the same paint on the walls and ceiling
If you’ve opted to go for white paint on the walls, you can also use the same white paint for the ceiling.
Steam rises and the ceiling paint needs to have the same mould and moisture resistant properties. Opting for all white in the bathroom can make painting a breeze as it shortens the preparation time with taping up.
Using the same paint on the walls and ceiling can also make the room look bigger.
5. Tape around edges of fixtures
If you’re a plumber, you could remove the toilet and paint behind it. Alternatively you can tape around the edges or use a careful hand to paint behind the toilet cistern and other fixtures.
We just took off the toilet cistern lid and because we were painting white on white and we had fairly straight lines, there was no need to remove fixtures.
If you aren’t painting white, I’d organise for a plumber to disconnect the fixtures so you can paint behind them to get a neat finish.
6. Allow adequate time to dry before using the bathroom
Follow the instructions to allow for drying time between coats. Before you use the bathroom, the paint needs to be completely dry.
Paint one bathroom at a time so when one bathroom is being painted, the other bathroom can be used.
