What people regret about repainting

“We should have got rid of the gotelé”

This is the regret we hear most often. Painting over gotelé gives a fresh colour but keeps the texture, and owners often realise once the room is finished that the texture, not the colour, was what made it feel dated. Removing it later means repeating the protection, the mess and the painting.

If smooth walls are what you really want, it is worth doing it once. Our gotelé removal page explains what it involves, and our article on removing or covering gotelé compares the methods.

“The colour looked different on the chart”

Colour cards are printed under neutral light. On the Costa del Sol, a south-facing living room flooded with afternoon sun and a north-facing bedroom can make the same colour look like two different shades. Cool greys can turn cold; warm whites can look yellow.

The solution is simple: test samples on your own walls, in more than one place, and look at them in the morning, afternoon and evening, and under artificial light. It costs little and avoids repainting.

“The fresh walls made everything else look tired”

Newly painted, smooth walls can make old varnished doors, yellowed skirting boards and stained ceilings look worse than before. Owners who painted only the walls often end up calling the painter back to do the rest.

When planning, look at the room as a whole: ceilings, doors, frames, skirting and radiators. Our door lacquering service is the most common addition once owners see this effect.

“We painted before the lighting work”

Deciding to add downlights, a cove ceiling or new sockets after the walls are painted means chasing fresh plaster and repainting. It happens more often than you might think, usually because lighting was not considered when the painting was planned.

If there is any chance you will want new lighting or a suspended ceiling, decide before painting. Our guide on indirect ceiling lighting explains what needs to be planned in advance.

“The cheaper quote left out the preparation”

Owners who chose the lowest quote sometimes discover that it covered little more than applying paint. Cracks reappeared, repairs showed through and patched areas looked different from the rest of the wall. The job then had to be partly redone.

Comparing quotes properly means checking that each describes preparation, repairs, priming and protection. Our checklist for hiring a painter sets out the questions to ask.

“We did not think about living in the middle of it”

Owners who stayed at home during painting and wall work sometimes underestimated the disruption: rooms out of use, furniture moved around, some dust despite precautions. The work went well, but the experience was more tiring than expected.

A clear room-by-room plan, agreed in advance, makes a big difference. So does storing belongings in closed boxes and keeping one room as a clean refuge until the end.

What is the common thread?

Almost every regret comes from deciding the scope too narrowly or too late. Thinking through the whole room, the lighting, the doors and the sequence before painting costs nothing and saves doing things twice. Our interior painting page shows how we plan a job from the start.

“We picked the wrong finish for the room”

Sheen is easy to overlook when choosing paint. A very matt finish in a busy hallway or a child’s bedroom marks quickly and is hard to clean without leaving shiny patches. A glossy finish on an imperfect wall highlights every bump. Owners who chose the same finish for every room often wish they had varied it.

A simple rule helps: more washable finishes where hands and bags touch the walls, such as hallways, kitchens and children’s rooms, and flatter finishes where you want the wall to recede, such as living rooms and bedrooms. Ceilings are almost always best in a flat finish.

“We forgot about the furniture and the holidays”

For holiday homes and rentals, the timing of the work matters. Owners who booked painting just before the season sometimes found that a small delay, a wall that needed more preparation than expected, or a colour change left them racing against the first guests. Others forgot that furniture had to go somewhere and ended up storing it in the rooms that still needed painting.

Telling the contractor the date the property must be ready, and planning where furniture will go room by room, removes most of this stress. It is also worth leaving a margin for touch-ups after the final walk-through.