Ceiling painting tip

Hi,

I've searched the forum and nobody seems to have discussed this before.

I have always hated painting ceilings, not particularly because of the work involved but because you can never see where you've been properly. It's difficult to do a good job and it's not very satisfying to know that you'll always spot patches that need another coat later in the daylight. Plus painting by tungsten lightbulbs or halogen uplighter is a mostly waste of time.

Well our outside floodlight blew the other week and I purchased a new one from eBay. Always wanting to go one better I bought a 400W metal halide unit. (Those are the ones usually used to light stadiums etc, they are 5 times more efficient than halogens). The drawback is that they take 10 minutes to warm up.

I decided to use it to light the room whilst painting and was amazed to see that, due to the blueish white light, it showed up every blemish and missed stroke. Plus the second coat was easy as it was obvious which patches had been painted and which hadn't.

It's still probably cheaper to get that pink indicator paint if you've only got a few rooms to do but I would say that I preferred using the light plus it works on pale colours for walls too.

I'm not going to plug a particular supplier so you'll have to search for your own but mine was around £69 for comparison. Crazy sounding idea, I know but I had to share it.

It aint a silly idea.

Alot more people are becoming so fussy with wanting 100% perfect flat surfaces. Though they have to be prepared to pay for it.

One problem is plastering or decorating in the winter and the job looks great but then in the summer it shows bits that were previously unseen.

This is one reason that in new builds (interior) that are built in the winter appear to be more of a mess when the summer comes.

Though it aint the tradesman's faults.

Also, there are soooooooo many sub contractors out there also that rip-off other sub-contractors. However, this has only became worse since most building firms started to go PLC. This also can make for poor wormanship etc..............

no ones perfect might just need a second coat.
also don't paint at night natural light is better as for your bulbs,the yellow sheen is from using cool white bulbs and daylight bulbs will give the blue white look also in the winter or gloomy days daylight will raise your spirits