If you are hiring professional painters to paint your house interior, you’re likely wondering how often your walls, ceilings, and trim should be painted. While the most popular reason for interior painting is to update the colors of a room, another good reason is for general upkeep to ensure your home always looks great.
Your home interior typically doesn’t need to be painted as often as the exterior. However, there are some simple painting frequency rules you should follow to keep your paint looking fresh in every space and on every surface inside your house.
How Often Should You Paint Interior Walls?
Some walls in your home need to be repainted more frequently than others due to daily wear and tear. For example, if you only eat in your formal dining room a couple times a year during the holidays, you probably won’t need to paint the walls as often as those found in your kitchen, hallways, or bathroom.
- Living Room & Dining Room: If you used high-quality, durable paint in these rooms, you likely won’t need to repaint for quite a few years. Even if you use your living room more often than your dining room, the durable paint and room decor can often protect it from wear. You will want to paint your house interior every 5 to 7 years. This frequency generally does the trick for both of these rooms.
- Kitchen & Bathroom: Food splatters in the kitchen. Messy fingers on walls. Moisture in the bathroom. These factors and others require that kitchens, bathrooms (and laundry rooms) be repainted more often than dining and living rooms. Professional painters use the most durable, gloss paints on trim and satin paints on walls in these rooms to ensure the paint lasts as long as possible. You will likely notice that your kitchen and bathroom will need fresh paint every 3 to 4 years, sometimes longer.
- Bedrooms: If you don’t have kids, you will find that the paint in your bedrooms can last a long time. Because adult bedrooms are typically used less frequently, you may find that you won’t need to repaint until you want to change up the color! But kids’ bedrooms are an entirely different story as they are used for both sleep and play. Professional painters often use an eggshell or satin sheen when repainting a child’s bedroom walls. This can ensure that paint will last longer even when it has to be scrubbed down multiple times over. Kids’ bedrooms usually need repainted every 2 to 3 years.
- Hallways: The hallways and corridors of your home are walked through more often than any other space in your house. This means that you will see a lot more dents, scuff marks, and other wear and tear in these areas. Have professional painters paint these spaces every 2 to 3 years to keep your paint looking fresh and new.
 Painting Tip! Drywall repair prior to painting over dings and scrapes is often necessary. Professional painters also suggest paint with an eggshell sheen as it is great for hallways with a lot of foot traffic.
How Often Should You Paint Your Ceiling?
Painting your house interior also includes ceiling painting. Repainting a ceiling can be a great way to brighten up any room of your home. Over time, white ceilings will show up yellow in spots due to sunlight, moisture, and other daily wear. Unfortunately, you may not be able to see the yellowing until it’s too late since the process is very gradual.
Before the yellowing gets too bad, keep in mind that ceiling paint tends to last about twice as long as wall paint. So, getting your home’s ceilings repainted every other time you get your walls painted can help keep your ceilings looking bright. When you trust your ceiling paint project to a professional painting company, it can often last up to 10 years.
Paint Fact! Flat white is the most popular color for ceilings. You can expect to see an immediate brightening of the room by about 20% when you paint over sun yellowing, and cooking and candle smoke stains.
How Often Should You Paint Your Trim & Baseboards?
When you paint your house interior, don’t forget about your interior trim! Your home’s baseboards, doors, window trim, cabinets and other decorative wood details take the most beating inside your home. Aside from simply wanting to change the color of your trim, you will find that trim inside rooms with high foot traffic will show more signs of wear and chipping than those that aren’t frequently used. Most people tend to repaint home interior trim every 2 to 4 years depending on where the trim is located.
Painting Tip! Sometimes your painting company will leave you with extra paint leftover from your trim painting project. Use it to touch up major nicks and dings to prolong the life of your trim.
Trust Professional Painters to Repaint Your House Interior
Is it time to paint your house interior? Whether you need wall painting, ceiling painting, or trim painting services, you’ll be in good hands when you trust your interior painting project to professional painters. A qualified painting team will expertly refresh any room in your home by preparing every surface properly, and using only the most durable, quality paints to ensure your paint job lasts for years to come. The best painters can break up your quote “a la carte” so you can see individual costs for different rooms and surfaces. Get your free interior painting quote today!
Photo Credit: urbaneapts Flickr via Compfight cc Photo adapted for blog.