Paint’s effective to freshen room

By ERIN VANDERBERG

Tough economic times may have put many a home renovation on the chopping block. But don’t hang up your design dreams just yet.

Instead, get back to basics. The cheapest, most effective way to transform your home is with a coat of paint.

“Compare buying a gallon of paint for a room to buying carpet, flooring, draperies, or prints for the wall,” says Mitch Cooper of Cooper Paint in Monticello, N.Y. “With paint, you are talking about $25 for a new room.”

Painting on a budget starts with supplies, says Greg Seaman of EarthEasy.com, a Web site devoted to finding environmentally sound lifestyle choices. Save money on rags, dropcloths and painters’ buckets by reusing items you have around the house, he says. Old vinyl shower curtains make perfect dropcloths.

Staying on budget means buying the right amount of the right paint the first time around.

Measure your wall space; the back of the paint can will tell you how much you need to buy.

Since finish and color are the hardest choices to make, do some homework online, consult a book or ask paint-store professionals.

“Nothing can take away the clean feeling of new paint faster than a dark, murky color,” says HGTV host Monica Pedersen. Her new online video series, the “Color Crisis Center” at hgtv.com, is one of many sites offering do-it-yourselfers video tutorials and advice on choosing paint.

“Painting a room isn’t something you should decide to run out and do on a Saturday morning,” says Pedersen. “Take your time. Otherwise, you are creating double the work for yourself.”

She suggests buying a “sample pot” of paint and coloring a piece of posterboard as a large paint chip for the wall. “Paint looks different all day long, so you’ll want to lay it out in your space and your light,” says Pedersen.

She suggests moving the large chip around for several days before deciding on the color.

Pedersen prefers a matte finish. “I love flat paint. I use it in every room I can. It hides imperfections and, unlike semigloss or satin, you can touch it up without having to repaint entire sections of the wall,” she says.

Now they make a flat finish for kitchen and bath called “scrubbable” matte. “This is great news in the world of finishes,” says Pedersen.

Don’t scrimp on rollers and an angled brush. Spend a little more to get better, reusable ones. Rollers can be stored overnight without washing by wrapping them in foil, sealing them in a plastic bag and refrigerating them. Brushes can be washed thoroughly and used for years to come.

Getting creative with paint also can substitute for more expensive remodeling.

“When you have a room that has no architectural features, you can add them with paint,” says Judy Pepper of Pepper Design Associates in Denver. “A wide, white, horizontal stripe can add contrast and structure to an otherwise featureless wall.”

Pepper offers a tip for leftover paint: Seal the lid tightly and store it upside down.