Tired of the same colored walls? Planning a makeover of your house and it needs a paint job? The painting may not seem as much of a hassle as the proper process to achieve perfectly painted walls. The first thing you can do is check whether you even need to clean the walls before painting. So let’s find out how to clean walls before painting properly.

You need to check a small section of the wall to see the possibility of cleaning walls. However, if cleaning is necessary then you cannot skip it at any cost. Painting the walls without prepping them will result in uneven and streaky walls. To make the paint look extra good, you need to know how to clean walls before painting.

How to Clean Walls Before Painting

Clear up the Room

The first step to cleaning the walls is to clean the space of the room’s wall you are planning to paint. Remove furniture and additional things from the wall. You can just throw a blanket/clean sheet on top of it to prevent paint from falling on it during the painting.

Dust the Walls

This is a very important step; dusty walls can cause the paint to apply streaky on the walls. In order to prevent that, use a feather duster or any clean cloth to cleanse dust or from the walls. It is also important to get rid of any cobwebs on the corner of walls or anywhere you can see them. Cleaning the walls of any dust will keep your paint and the brush, which you are using to paint the walls completely clean.

Remove Mold

If your house or room is not well ventilated and there is a possibility of it being damp for some reason, a possible leakage or due to rainfall, that is the strongest reason that could cause mold to appear on the walls of the room. The best way to prevent the building of mold on walls, you need to be a 100% positive that your house is well ventilated. But if that is not the case, there are several ways to get rid of the mold. First is to make a solution of 4 parts water with 1 part HTH (chlorine); another method is to make a solution of 4 parts water and 1 part JIK (sodium hypochlorite).

Using either of the two solutions, what is required next is to spray the solution on the wall where there is the appearance of mold or you feel that it is going to build up on the wall eventually. Once you have done that, keep a check that the area with the mold is completely drenched with the solution and it requires a few hours for the solution to do its job of reacting against the mold and eventually getting rid of it. Once that is done, you have to rinse the surface of the wall with clean water, making sure no residue of the solution is left behind.

How to Get Rid of Old  Wallpaper/Paint on Walls Before Painting

In past, wallpapers were used to be all the rage and everyone at least had one room covered with wallpapers. Nowadays, wallpapers are rarely used to decorate rooms. To remove old wallpapers, always use a special wallpaper remover. The wallpaper remover contains special chemicals to break down the glue used to paste the wallpaper on the walls. If you try and use anything else apart from the special wallpaper remover, it is possible that glue will be left behind. Remember it can cause issues with the painting later on. However, If not during the painting, then surely after some time the glue will cause the paint to become discolor and fade.

There are different ways to repaint walls, change color or change the formula of the wall paint. If you have no plans to change the paint formula, then just clean the walls in a regular way. However, if you want to change the formula from glossy/regular to a matte finish then surely it will take some time and efforts.

For the perfect matte finish, you need to use fine grade sandpaper and scrub down the old paint. It creates a huge mess and requires a protective mask to avoid breathing in any paint particles. Then when you are done with the whole process, you can go ahead and paint with the matte finish paint.

How to Clean Walls Before Painting- Final Words

When you are done with the different cleaning processes, you need to do a final cleaning of the wall. Regular walls can be easily cleaned with diluted washing liquid with water. But walls such as the kitchen walls need some elbow grease. Kitchen walls have oil and grease on them and require a strong washing liquid to break down the stubborn greasiness. Cleaning the walls before painting, you need to be positive that there are no residues left behind from the previous processes. Also, be very careful about the walls being totally dry before you start with the painting.

These are the several methods for how to clean walls before painting them. You need to do these steps before every painting a wall to get best and long lasting painting results.