How Do You Paint A Popcorn Ceiling?

**dolphin** · 04-11-2005, 02:40 AM

Anyone know? My whole house is popcorn ceiling and I don't have a clue how to paint it without the stuff coming off.

**dolphin** · 04-11-2005, 10:48 AM

Well, who knew "Ask Jeeves" would know!

Painting an existing popcorn ceiling:
Here we are faced with trying to paint a very soft super absorbent material. In order to get good penetration for bonding and also stop the suction to conserve paint, we need to prime first using a thinned down latex flat finish paint or latex primer. If you have more than one room to do you might consider renting an airless sprayer to make short work of the job.
Spraying is not cost effective for one small room so rolling is the answer.

Set yourself up with a 5 gallon pail, roller grid insert for the pail, 3/4" - 1 3/4" nap roller cover and a 4' extension pole that you can screw into the roller frame. Thin the paint with a pint or so of the appropriate thinner as you are going to apply in small sections and quickly. Rolling back and forth as you normally would softens the texture and it will cling to the roller cover and you will remove it. Saturate the cover well with paint, run it up and down the roller grid a few times to distribute the paint evenly and using a light stroke, roll at first away from you, back lightly, stop and reload your roller.
Do not be concerned about how well it is covering, you are just trying to get enough paint on the texture to "toughen" it up for the finish coat of paint.

Allow your primer to dry overnight and then apply your finish flat latex ceiling paint. You will get a lot more square footage per gallon with your finish paint due to the fact that it is now sealed.