As a rule it will take around six hours to coat a 4m x 5m room and around two days to paint the entire room, including drying time between coats. For house exteriors, it will take around one to two weeks to paint an entire house, including drying time. To save time you can use Dulux Once as it only requires one coat, not two. To make your planning easy Inspirations has included a Paint & Cost Calculator on this site.

It can be confusing when these three terms seem to be used interchangeable but there is a difference between the three. Prepcoats prepare the surface to be painted with a topcoat. Primers, on the other hand, adhere to timber surfaces and contain stain inhibiting tannin blockers, while an undercoat is ideal for preparing plasterboard. The easy alternative is Dulux 1 Step™ Acrylic Primer Sealer & Undercoat. Being a three-in-one sealer, primer and undercoat it saves time and money.

To paint cupboard doors made from common kitchen materials such as Laminex® and Formica® you can use a rapid-drying preparation paint like Dulux PrepLock Shellac Base, without the need to sand first. Then apply a top coat of either water or oil-based enamel. Don’t try this with work surfaces such as benchtops though.

If the paint has peeled and bubbled it will need to be removed with a wire brush or scraper and then sanded. Wipe down before painting. For badly deteriorated paint, a paint stripper may be needed such as Selleys® Kwik Strip™ Smart. Where there’s cracks, it is important to overfill them with a filler such as Spakfilla® before sanding back to a smooth surface and applying a primer undercoat. Using a sanding sponge around trim to shape uneven surfaces will also help to achieve the best results.

Think from the top down when it comes to painting. This way you can paint over any drips and you won’t scuff any finished surfaces with your ladder. As a rule, start with ceilings before moving onto the walls. Then paint the trims and then windows and doors before finally painting the skirting boards.

This is a simple process when you use Dulux Ultrasmooth Acrylic Sealer Undercoat. This will smooth over texture profiles, minor cracks and defects and return your wall to flat.

A roller saves time for larger flat areas but opt for a brush when you are painting trims, corners and edges and anything detailed or fiddly. Always cut-in with a brush, edger or trim & corner pad around edges, skirting boards, power points and light fixtures.

Painting red over white is particularly labour-intensive and can take 3 or 4 coats before you achieve good coverage. To avoid this, if your wall is a light colour it is a good idea to use an undercoat, such as Dulux 1 Step Acrylic Primer Sealer Undercoat. The paint experts at your local Inspirations store will then tint this to the exact shade of grey needed for your chosen shade of red. This will reduce the amount of coats of the red top coat that you will need to use.

Spraying the outside of a house is a great way to speed up the job, however, remember preparation is the key whether you use a brush or a spray gun. Other top tips to remember when spraying are: make sure you practise on a piece of cardboard first; maintain an even speed when spraying (speeding up or slowing down will affect the spread of paint); keep the spray gun horizontal at all times (use a ladder rather than tilting the gun upwards to reach high spots) and spray tricky areas like corners first. As with all applications that you are unsure of, make sure you drop into your local Inspirations store for advice.

It can be daunting to use a dramatic colour but you can alleviate some of the anxiety using a simple technique. Paint 2-3 large pieces of cardboard (you can pick them up from news agencies) in your chosen colour using a sample pot. Place these pieces of cardboard on different sections of wall in your room to see how the colour looks in different light and shadow. Place at least one piece of cardboard quite high up the wall. Leave them there for a few days to see how the colour looks at different times of the day and night. If you are still not completely sure after this exercise, compromise and just use the grape on a feature wall.

You may choose to use a remover solution such as Polypaper Peel, or hire a steaming machine (available from most Inspirations stores). Newer vinyl wall covering can often be peeled off dry by hand. They may leave a backing paper residue, which can be removed by sponging on warm water and peeling it off or scraping it with a broad-bladed scraper. Older types of wallpaper such as yours, however, are less cooperative and may require scratching with a very coarse sand paper to help the water or solution to penetrate. Paint that peels, or flakes away, from the surface, and is powdery or poorly bound, should then be removed. The surface should then be cleaned thoroughly and when dry, resealed with an oil based sealer such as Dulux Prepcoat Sealer Binder. When repainting allow sufficient time for the Sealer Binder to dry and cure if coating with an acrylic paint (water based) i.e. 2-3 days.

Generally speaking, light colours make a space seem larger so paint your walls in lighter hues, which reflect the light and brighten up the room. Be sure not to cut your space up by using borders or painting above and below picture rails different colours. The same goes for dado boards. Keep the full wall the one colour or use just very slight contrasts to maximise the feeling of space. You can also promote the illusion of height by painting the walls and the ceiling in the same (light) colour. Remember dark ceilings will tend to look lower. You can also paint the trims the same colour as the walls so as not to draw attention to the boundaries of the walls.

Think of the letter ‘W’ when you roll. Roll a ‘W’ shape first in a space around one square metre and roll over this area until the paint is spread evenly and you have achieved good coverage. Begin the next area of the wall a metre down, overlapping the wet edge of the previously completed area. Continue these steps, working a square metre at a time.

Begin by browsing through lifestyle magazines, like House & Garden and Home Beautiful, to see if there is anything that jumps out at you. Keep your eyes peeled when you are out and about. Friends’ houses, even cafes and fashion boutiques that you visit, might have a particular colour or colour scheme that appeals to you. Do you have a favourite shirt, or even a favourite doona cover, where the colour makes you feel good? Remember you can use items like these to match up with colour cards or you can even take them into your local Inspirations store to get your paint colour matched. Don’t forget to check out the Choosing Colour section and the Photo Gallery of this website to get inspired. To make colour choices with complete confidence, consider having an in-home Inspirations Colour Consultation.

The professionals often make it look easy by painting without tape and using just a steady hand to achieve a good line. For most people though, using a good quality painter’s masking tape is the surest bet. Also, where possible, it is preferable to remove or loosen fixtures to paint around them. However, tape will suffice when this is not feasible. Make sure you remove the tape before the paint has dried to avoid the paint chipping or cracking.