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Should yousprayor roller and hand-brush your home’s next exterior paint?
It’s not a common question since paint sprayers are far more available than ever before.
Commercial-grade high-velocity paint sprayers can be rented for $400 to $600 per week.
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Lower velocity consumer-grade sprayers can be purchased for about half of that amount.
If hand-painting a house seems incredibly time-consuming and laborious compared to paint spraying, this isn’t necessarily so.
The brush-and-roller technique is favored by many painters for its simplicity, cleanliness, and economy.
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Which is best for your project?
when you land everything masked and taped-up, spraying is faster than brushing.
One person can paint spray a small home in one day.
More coats take another couple of days.
Paint spraying a house each day is an all-encompassing project.
You don’t move between paint spraying and other projects around the house.
You’re committed to the full cycle of painting: prepping, painting, and cleaning up.
Always budget time at the end of the day to flush out the paint sprayer and all lines.
Difficult architectural work and textures are easy to cover with a paint sprayer.
A light touch is required to avoid pooling the paint in deeply incised ornamentation.
As with any painting project, be aware of upcoming rain since it can ruin your coverage work.
More critical is wind.
Light breezes make paint spraying more difficult.
In high winds, paint spraying is nearly impossible.
You don’t have so many tools and materials that need to be brought out and set up.
Often, you’re able to break up the painting into several smaller projects throughout the day.
Tightly wrap up the brush or roller in plastic and reuse it for each mini-session.
When painting a house with a brush, you barely need to suit up.
Less covering and masking is required.
Spraying requires a wide buffer of plastic sheeting or dropcloth.
Brushing and rolling only need a long, narrow painter’s dropcloth directly below the paint area.
Careful painters may dispense with the dropcloth.
Brushing and rolling let you pay more attention to the details.
Brushing and rolling conserve paint.
The paint goes on thicker when brushing, yet it uses less paint.
Unlike paint sprayer, no paint is lost to the air.
Some water evaporation may occur, but water-based latex paint can be thinned out with more water.
Brushing and rolling are more physically demanding than spraying.
You’ll need to be able to reach all areas of the house exterior, even the highest spots.
It’s best to estimate high when spraying on paint.
Spraying uses more paintbecause the sprayer atomizes the paint into tiny droplets.
Most of the droplets end up on the surface, but many others drift away.
This is inherent with paint spraying, and little can be done to control it.
Also, any paint left in the hose must be blown out.
Some of the paint can be saved, but much of it goes to waste.
Dripping and laying on the paint too thick are factors that will lower this estimate.
Very windy days can increase your paint consumption by as much as 25-percent.
Instead, pump the paint remaining in the hose back into the container instead of disposing of it.
Paint remaining in even 25 feet of the hose can add up.
Plus, conserving the paint is more eco-friendly.
Standing closer to the surface reduces this paint cloud.
Spraying closer means a greater chance of drips.
