House Painting 101: Tips and Tricks to Help You Paint Like a Pro

New to interior painting? Just bought your first house but have never picked up a paint brush before? A first time home owner shares valuable tips learned over several years of painting and renovating her own house.

Skip the big home improvement stores and pay a visit to your local paint store (my local Benjamin Moore dealer is awesome). They'll give more personalized service and tend to be more knowledgeable than the employees at the big home improvement stores.

Spend the additional money to purchase higher quality paint. Most premium brands will only cost $5 to $10 more per gallon than the "economy" brands - money well spent to achieve better results in fewer coats. Two brands that I've had consistent success with are Benjamin Moore and Ralph Lauren. For primer, you can't beat Muralo or Benjamin Moore.

Don't forget to ask your friends and family for advice regarding paint brands and colors they've tried. I've found that most home owners have horror stories to share regarding paint color selection. It's a lot easier to learn from someone else's mistakes then to go through the trouble of painting and to have your room end up a ghastly color like highlighter green.

And speaking of highlighter green, don't rely on a tiny paint swatch to pick your paint color. A two inch paint chip is not going to give you an accurate representation of what the room will look like when painted in that color. I've learned this the hard way, after I let my husband pick a shade of pale yellow named "evocative sunlight" solely based on the swatch. Against my better judgment, I even let him go to the paint store unsupervised.

When we opened up the can, the color was much brighter than I expected, but being a novice at painting, I foolishly believed that it would look better on the walls after it dried. We painted well into the night, and when we woke up the next day, there was a neon glow coming from the family room. Somehow, I had failed to notice that "evocative sunlight" had a neon green undertone that reared its ugly head when the entire room was painted.