The Do's & Don'ts of Painting For Home Sellers

It's easy, quick and cheap, but don't make the mistake that it can cure every homes woes. To do it right when selling you should follow some basic rules of using paint as part of your home marketing to-do list. Mark Nash author of 1001 Tips for Buying and Selling a Home shares some tried and true tips on how to get the most mileage out of repainting a room or an entire house.

-To make the living space of a home appear larger or flow more easily use the same color or hues of the same color in adjoining rooms. The key is to keep the eye moving. Recently a home seller had painted each room on the first floor a different bold trend color, it shrunk the home visually and made it much darker. A new tone-on-tone color scheme I suggested expanded and lightened the house, and it sold soon after the redo.

-Use eggshell paint on the walls and semi-gloss on woodwork and trim. White is a fail-safe trim color. Buyers get always imagine their wall color choice with white trim and they like that they won't have to repaint the trim.

-To expand room height paint the ceiling a different but light color than the walls. A decorator tip that really works is to add some blue tint to your white ceiling color.

-Don't paint laminate kitchen cabinets, the paint peels and wears easily and looks like a quick fix.

-For a quality paint job, preparation is important. Walls and trim should be sanded, spackled and cleaned, for paint to adhere properly.

-Light paint colors require two coats, darker colors three or four. Prime everything once to even existing surface colors out before using finish colors. Gloss finishes show wall imperfections more than flat finishes, use sparingly.

-Use quality paints. It might not make sense to buy better paint if you won't enjoy it, but inexpensive paints can really cheapen a paint job and the home. The small cost difference isn't worth the gamble.

-Bring paint samples home from home improvement stores to accurately match with carpets and fabrics. Paint manufactures now offer sample sizes, do a wall test of any color your thinking of using. Colors look different in different lighting and times of day.

-Don't be tempted to use faux finishes, leafing or glazes. They're trendy and very specific in taste. Buyers will think it will take extra time and expense to remove and change them.

-Do take the time to put down drop clothes, tape trim and window mullions, remove switch plates and curtain hardware. Paint drips and stains lack attention of detail to home buyers.

-Think twice before have a bath tub or ceramic tile repainted or finished. To get a good new finish on these surfaces is difficult and buyers run from bubbled bathtub make over's.

-If you're not the best painter or time-starved to do the job right, hire a professional to come in and paint. You can focus on other jobs to be done before the marketing of your home begins and it will eliminate additional stress.

Mark Nash's fourth real estate book, "1001 Tips for Buying and Selling a Home" (2005), and working as a real estate broker in Chicago are the foundation for his consumer-centric real estate perspective which has been featured on ABC-TV, CBS The Early Show, Bloomberg TV, CNN-TV, Chicago Sun Times & Tribune, Fidelity Investor’s Weekly, Dow Jones Market Watch, HGTVpro.com, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Realty Times, Universal Press Syndicate and USA Today.

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