You’re really going to rent scaffolding to paint the vaulted ceiling in your Great Room? Before you start painting through the blades of your ceiling fan, educate yourself about what makes for a top-notch paint job. Oregon Home asked two interior designers and three professional painters for inside info about homeowners’ typical brushes with paint. Man, they let it roll!

[1. Spend money on the services of a professional painter when your house—or schedule—demands it.]
If your house includes vaulted ceilings or lots of eaves and odd-sized nooks and crannies, consider hiring a painting contractor to take on your interior painting. Don’t rule out hiring a professional painter until you get some estimates and compare it against how many hours it will really take you to transform a room. While your home’s tall straight walls may look easy to paint, they’re actually not. Painting an 18-foot-tall wall takes equipment most homeowners don’t have. “A lot of the challenges with today’s homes are safety-related and height-related,” says Brian Hoge, the owner of Brian Hoge Painting in Hillsboro, Ore., who’s been in business for 28 years. “Now, my crew and I deal with 16- and 18-foot entryways with staircases and vaulted ceilings. People don’t always have the ladders and equipment for painting that high up. Plus, it can be dangerous to be up that high if you don’t know what you’re doing.”


[2. Update trim colors and the ceiling color when you change wall color.]
This is especially important when you opt for dark colors such as the browns, maroons and dark terra-cottas at the bottom of paint strips. With these shades, white trim can look too stark. “If a room’s walls will be painted in a really dark color, don’t use a white on the ceiling,” says Brenda Miller of Brenda Miller Interior Design in Portland. “Bring the ceiling color closer to the wall color. I’ve found that colors that have a little yellow or a little gray in them can work well on a ceiling. Homeowners often overlook ceiling colors and don’t give them the time and attention they deserve, but the color of your ceiling often makes or breaks a room.”

If you’re just repainting walls the same color or are staying within the same color family, you can often get by with just painting the walls. “A lot of times you can get away with ‘updating’ the wall color,” says Hearst. “You can paint the walls five or six times before you really need to repaint the trim. The trim should last 10 or 20 years.”


[3. When you select wall colors, don’t stay in the band of the color wheel that you’ve stayed in for the last 20 years.]
Be bold; it’s only paint. You can always repaint a wall if you can’t stand the way it looks. Work with a color consultant if you’re aware that you’re among the color-challenged or if you just want to end up with a great designer space. “I’m seeing a lot of bold splashes of color with warm tones,” says Hoge.

Whatever you do, don’t choose an outlandish or wild color just to make a statement. “With paint, people aren’t going to always change it every two years,” says Rachel Brodkey of Rachel Brodkey Painted Environments in Portland. “I encourage my clients to choose colors they want to live with for a while. You can’t be too bold or too subtle. It comes down to your personality and how it fits with the space.”


[4. If your child wants a room covered in zebra stripes, don’t give in to his or her whims.]
There’s a better way to combine the need for new paint with your child’s desire of the moment. Kids are often enthusiastic about decorating their rooms and can have ideas that are, well, not always feasible. The problem is that their tastes can change so quickly that their latest, most favorite color can turn into their most hated before the walls even dry.

“Kids will say, ‘I want red room,’ or, ‘I want hot pink walls,’ but kids grow and change, and two months later they may decide red isn’t their favorite color any more,” says Miller. “Paint their room a color such as camel or a color that gives the room a kind of warm golden-glow feeling, and let them have bright red pillows or a red lamp. Let the things they pick out be the Color of the Moment. They’ll like their room, and you’ll be able to live with it as well.”