Interior House Painting Rules

1. Slosh Your Brush

Before painting, slosh your brush in whatever solvent you will be using at the end of the day to clean the brush (i.e., water for latex, mineral spirits for oil, etc.) It'll be easier to clean when you're done.

2. Wrap Brush or Roller

If you don't feel like cleaning your brush or roller at the end of the day and expect to get back to painting within a few days--wrap the brush or roller tightly in a plastic bag and put in the freezer.

3. Latex Gloves or Lotion, Your Pick

Latex gloves are great for keeping your hands clean (especially if you're using oil-based paint!). If you can't stand latex gloves or are allergic, a thick application of hand lotion before painting will make cleaning a lot easier later on.

4. Wet Edge

Always keep a wet edge as you paint, and work away from that wet edge. If you paint over a dry edge, you will get overlap marks.

5. Avoid Cheap Roller Covers and Brushes

This one is important. Cheap roller covers leave fuzz on the wall. Cheap brushes leave streaky brush marks. Avoid those multi-packs of rollers, ten for a dollar. Pay the extra few cents and get better tools. It'll be worth it. Honest it will.

6. Test for Loose Paint

Will the existing painted surface take new paint? And hold it for years to come? Test this out by adhering a strip of duct tape to the existing painted surface and...ripping it away. If flakes of paint more than microscopic size come off, you may need to scrape and sand.

7. Low-Stick Masking Tape

Also known as "blue tape," this tape comes off easier and doesn't peel off primer or existing paint. Blue tape, by itself, will save you at least an hour of frustration over the old-style beige masking tape.

8. Rein in Your Paint Can Opener

Paint can openers, those little metal keys (you do use one, don't you?) are notorious for getting lost in the shuffle. Chain it to a small chunk of wood just like a public bathroom key. Whatever you do, just don't lose it!

9. Painting Process

Paint in this order:

Ceiling

Walls

Trim

Cabinets

Doors

And remember to always paint from top-down!

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Welcome to Modern Interior Design IDeas Images! From design tips to the most stylish and durable products on the market, IDeas Images is a new series of video podcasts that explore interior design options to help you turn your home into a beautiful space!

The Color Yellow

The Color Yellow

Color is vital element for interior decoration in your home. Without it our house would be dull, and so would our lives. We use color to empower us, to cheer us up, to raise emotions, to color our world and personalise it.

There are many meanings for the color yellow, the most obvious ones being sunny, warm and radiant.

We use yellow more than we know it, cream is yellow, it is yellow tinted with white. Cream is an extremely popular color as it is warm but not overpowering, it is more friendly than stark white and we use it in every room and a lot outside the house too.

I used to do a lot of design work for office fitouts and I used yellow frequently. It is an innovative color and sharpens the memory, perfect for the office environment. 

Gold is yellow, rich and luxurious, a perfect accessory as seen here in this tieback tassel. 

The Color Wheel

Color is the most important part of interior decorating.

Everything we see has color and we need to be able to select color to enhance the space we want to decorate.

That entails choosing multiple colors, and can become overwhelming.

That is why we have broken down the colors to show their meanings, we profile

Color and Nature

Red

Orange

The Color Orange

The Color Orange

Orange, the happy cheerful color. We often overlook using orange as we find it bright and bold and too brilliant to use in our homes.

But wait, where does peach and apricot come from? Yes, the color orange. They are a tint of orange. Now you can see that we do actually use orange a lot in our interiors.

It is a warm and happy color and useful for old people's homes and institutions as it is an anti depressant and decreases hostility and irritability as well as being cheerful and fun.

It is good for use in classrooms, or where large groups of people congregate as it improves social behavior.

Orange is a fantastic color to use as an accent. Throw around some bright orange cushions to brighten up a dull color scheme, add some orange flowers to a vase to enliven the room.

Use orange as a feature wall to create a focal point, add a purple vase on the table and you have a striking feature. Using color in small amounts is a good way to introduce strong hues into your home.

The Color Red

The Color Red

Red is the color of roses for valentines day, romance and lust, red is an exciting color, stimulating and exciting.

No wonder the extrovert that wears a red suit to a business meeting gets noticed, not only for their boldness in color choice, but the sense of power that it carries.

Red is brave and carries good luck, it is a very popular and important color in asian societies.
How do we use it in the home?

With caution if you want to use it in bulk, if not, scatter it everywhere! To make a room feel cosy you can use red for the walls, it will enclose the space, but it does make it more intimate.

Red can be broken up and diluted as such, as shown here by the addition of taupe and gold in the fabric pattern.

I wouldn't suggest red for a bedroom as it increases your respiratory rate, and what you usually want to do in your bedroom is lower your rate, relax and sleep. But you can use it as accents and that is where red really excels.

I have seen a few commercial schemes that have taken some design ideas from the 1960's, the rooms are pure white and have red leather sofas and red pendant light fittings, they look spectacular, red is the focus and it draws you in to sit down and then look up at the lights. Simple yet effective. You may not want to be so dramatic in your home, but red can be a great color for focal points or features.

A red wall around a fireplace immediately hints of cosy warmth, even if it is not lit. A red wall in the entry of your home suggests bold opulence. One area that red has probably not been thought of for is the dressing room, a private space in your home, red flatters the skin and you will look your best while you are putting on your makeup and getting dressed.

Color and Nature

The Observation of Color in Nature to Improve our Design

To unleash the creativity of a designer, simply start observing your surroundings. Take a stroll through the park, what do you see?

Trees, grass, water, ducks, leaves, flowers.

That is what everyone sees but look a little closer, look with a designer mind. Look at the way the bark covers the tree trunk, observe the myriad of colors within one small piece, retrace the form, feel the texture and see how it contrasts to the smoothness of the leaves.

Look how the sunlight can make the bark look different from when it is in the shade, observe the effect of shadow.

You can use these observations to learn how color, light and texture work in the interior. Another example is a flower, look closely, there is often more that one color in a single flower, and it frequently goes by unnoticed.

This simple use of juxtaposition means that the secondary color intensifies the main

Another example - a pond of water, the shadows created by the clouds in the sky, the different depths of water, and once again the juxtaposition of other items in the pond combine to create a fantastic monochromatic scheme of blue/green.

We need to slow down our hectic pace and deadlines that drive us to create without thinking and take the time to appreciate what is around us, this acts as our catalyst to design. How many times have you had a mental block and no matter which way you look, there seems no solution? Many! A simple stroll in the park can be all that is required to clear you head, get the blood moving around the body and gives you time to observe where design begins, at nature.

Carry around a note book and jot down your observations, what colors look great together, how the different textures of similar items create a subtle design, how the light can highlight or obscure, how much of a different color do you need to make a statement, how a mass of wild flowers with hundreds of different colours can work together to form a subtle single entity, how the curved flowing lines of a Willow tree are softer than the brutal severe lines of a Pine tree.

With these observations think how you would relate them back to your work, and how they can work in with people; after all we are the main reason for design, to create environments in which we can perform specific tasks comfortably.