How many tins of paint have you found rusting away in your garden shed? If you're anything like the average home owner then there will be one or two (dozen?) lurking somewhere. Now some of those tins of paint were plain old mistakes, you know you bought a colour on the spur of the moment and when you tried it on the wall it just looked wrong.
But I guess a lot of those odd cans of paint could be put down to 'buying too much paint and having it left over'.
This time, to help you avoid both spending too much and saving on using more storage space for storing overpurchases, use the handy paint calculator table to help you calculate how much paint to buy.
Here are some tips when deciding on how much paint you need to buy and saving money.
Break up the room into manageable sections, see diagramme below, and calculate the area of each section. Work in either metres or feet, but not both. Don't forget to subtract the area of window, door or other section that is not being painted.
Embossed, patterned, woodchip and textured wallpaper will have a greater surface area and therefore require more paint to cover it, allow 1/3 rd more.
Fresh or unpainted plaster and old wallpaper can be very thirsty. Paint with a slightly watered down emulsion, use some of that left-over stuff from the shed!
Dark colours painted over light or vice versa will require 2 or possibly 3 top coats of paint.
Use some of the left over paint, that you have lurking in your shed, to undercoat dark colours. This will help cut the cost of painting because you will not be using your expensive 'new' paint to remove the old colour.
If you are painting over a light colour with a dark paint, buy some universal paint 'tint' from good 'Decorating' merchants and tint up some of that left-over paint. Again this will save on using your 'new' paint for the under coat.
How to work out how much paint to buy
Use the chart below to help you calculate how much emulsion paint you will need to paint a single coat in an internal room. One litre covers approx 14 sq m (150 sq ft).
The room is an average height room of 2.4 mtrs
How Much Paint Do I Need?
Room size
Paint for walls
Paint for ceilings
3 x 3 m
1.3 ltr
0.7 ltr
3 x 4 m
1.6 ltr
0.9 ltr
3 x 4.5 m
1.6 ltr
1.0 ltr
4 x 4 m
1.9 ltr
1.2 ltr
4 x 4.5 m
1.9 ltr
1.3 ltr
4 x 5 m
2.2 ltr
1.4 ltr
4 x 5.5 m
2.2 ltr
1.6 ltr
5 x 5 m
2.2 ltr
1.8 ltr
5 x 5.5 m
2.5 ltr
2.0 ltr
5 x 6 m
2.8 ltr
2.3 ltr
The area a litre of paint will cover for different styles of paint
Coating
Coverage per Ltr
All pupose primer
12 sq m (130 sq ft)
Undercoat
16 sq m (170 sq ft)
Gloss
14 sq m (150 sq ft)
Non-drip gloss
12 sq m (139 sq ft)
Emulsion
14 sq m (150 sq ft)
Brian Cotsen is The Property Coach. Visit the website www.property-coach.co.uk and discover more great articles on home decorating, home staging and affordable interior design.
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Brian Cotsen is a Home & Property Stager & Interior Designer. Giving affordable interior design, home decorating and home staging advice http://www.property-coach.co.uk has lots of original articles, ideas & advice plus....
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