Tips for Hiring Painters and More I Learned From Having Every Room in My House Painted in Two Days

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When my husband and I moved into our first house last year, I imagined sitcom weekends spent painting the rooms together, complete with a boom box and cute overalls. Then I got pregnant unexpectedly. All bets were off. I could barely stand to eat a meal, let alone work hard (because if you’ve ever painted anything, you know it’s work). I just wanted to get the task checked off so I could go back to bed in peace. In an act of desperation, I used Thumbtack to hire a team of local painters and contacted Backdrop, a cult work, to determine the colors. (Full transparency: Backdrop gave me some, but I also bought $500 worth of it on my own and would do it again.) The plan was to finish the whole house in one go and I would never have to do it again. to think about it. Of course, things never go quite as planned – see: surprise pregnancy. Here are four things I didn’t think you should probably do, plus one decision I still enjoy today.

You’ll go too far with the samples no matter what

You would probably expect more from a design editor; however, I embarked on this journey without clear direction. I wanted to go through a bunch of paint shades, see what called to me, and then create a complementary palette from my favorites. One of the appeals of Canvas is its 82 curated shades, which you can filter by color and sort from light to dark on its site; I figured I could narrow down my choices fairly easily. Well, reader, I ended up ordering 20 samples. But imagine if I was faced with thousands of colors available at the hardware store! Luckily, Backdrop offers stickers. Rather than a heavy box of sample pots, I received a thin envelope, and there were no worries of dripping or brushing.

One sample is never enough

My ultimate color palette: a neutral taupe in the living room and hallways, a soft blue in the dining room, a bright green in the sunroom, and the purest white of Toile de fond on the majority of the trim and ceilings. (Not shown in this story but equally charming: moody teal in the powder room, a calming sage green in our bedroom, a more saturated version on the wainscoting in our only full bathroom, and a cool gray in the master bedroom. ‘friends.)

After a full day of recording at different times to see what the sample stickers looked like in different lighting, I had a few top contenders for each space. The hardest part was choosing a winner from there: I wanted to be able to see what the colors would look like on each wall at the same time, or on the white border. And in the center of a windowless stretch. Turns out all it took was a pair of scissors. I simply cut each sample into quarters and scattered them around the room. Highly recommend!

Ask your painters

After explaining to the painters how I wanted each color to be applied: green everywhere (even the ceiling!) in the veranda, turquoise only on the woodwork in the dining room, etc. — I was so confident that I left the house and came back when they finished the next day (pregnancy and paint fumes are not a good mix). I’ve texted with the painters a few times from my parents’ house, but honestly never thought to ask for photos of my progress. If I had, I would have detected simple misunderstandings about things like matching the dining room door to the now blue molding. These were easy solutions, but the late recognition of these problems forced the painters to come back a third day for a few hours.

There is a right and wrong paint finish for bathrooms

Even though a bathroom is indeed an interior space, standard interior painting won’t cut it. I learned this the hard way, when the ceiling above our shower started peeling a few months later. Backdrop rightly recommends its semi-gloss finish for bathrooms, which is more resistant to constant humidity and humidity…I just didn’t read the fine print. Pregnancy is to blame on the brain.

What I understood correctly: save leftover paint

I took the wise advice to save any extra paint in case we needed to do touch-ups later. But I’ve found scraps more useful for spur-of-the-moment DIY projects, from creating a thrift store picture frame to updating a Facebook Marketplace desktop (just make sure to use a water-based sealer on top). I save the few dollars I would have to spend on a sample pot, and I only have to venture into the basement instead of going to the hardware store. A full year after our big painting project, the same backdrop colors are still in rotation. I just shake the cans to remix them and they are good as new.