Preparing your walls for painting

When decorating any surface that has paint on it, the best way to start is by cleaning it down with sugar soap. Allow this to dry.

Once dry this can then be rubbed down with glass paper. This will roughen up the surface and remove any nibs that maybe present on this surface. This is especially important when painting a timber surface or an already gloss painted surface. The idea is to remove as much sheen as possible from the surface in order to allow the next coat to stick.

There are a number of abrasive papers available, you can use some wet or dry and others like glass paper which you must use dry. We also have an alternative in Polycell, which is Liquid Sanding. This can be brushed or rubbed onto the surface and allowed to dry, leaving you with a surface suitable to be painted.

Here's a tip when using glass paper, fold it in two and tear it in half then fold into three. Doing this will prevent the glass paper from slipping when you are using it on your walls.

If you have wallpaper to remove, then the best thing you can use is Polycell Wallpaper Stripper. It dissolves the paste making removing the wallpaper very easy indeed. However, if you have a vinyl wallpaper, you will need to remove that before you can use the wallpaper stripper.