Benefits of Repainting Your Home’s Interior

Never underestimate the transformative power of a new coat of paint. Just a day or two’s worth of work can revitalize a room and take off years worth of buildup and staining at the same time. This capability is so widely-recognized that when people ask how to improve their home before a sale, the most common response is: “Repaint your rooms.”

To learn why an interior paint project is so beneficial to your home and how it is able to accomplish so many things with just a few flicks of the brush, here are four advantages you can obtain with just a few coats of paint:

Clean and Refresh Your Walls

You would never go several years at a time without cleaning your floors, but not cleaning your walls or ceiling for a decade is not at all uncommon. While it is true that floors accumulate a lot more debris thanks to gravity, your walls and ceilings may be dirtier than you suspect.

When you repaint, the first task is to prepare the surface by sanding and cleaning it. You then usually lay down a layer of primer as a base coat. At this point, your walls are cleaner than they have ever been since the last time they were painted. Once the color you chose is completely applied, you will have pristine walls that look far fresher than they have in years.

Protect Your Interior Walls

Home exterior paint is incredibly important for protecting your siding and trim from the elements of Philadelphia, but interior paint can serve a similar purpose. Materials like drywall and plaster can tend to absorb moisture over time, gradually degrading their structural integrity and adding weight to your walls and ceiling.

Paint seals out moisture, protecting these surfaces from being saturated or being eventually contaminated with pathogens like mold or mildew. Paint can also repel dust, dirt and allergens from the walls, so these can be swept off the floor more easily. In older homes with plaster walls, paint can even prevent dust from forming in places where the plaster would have otherwise begun to disintegrate.

Dramatically Alter the Look of a Room

While paint can be thought of as practical, it is usually a cosmetic choice. Even still, just because something is aesthetically pleasing does not mean that it is a shallow preference. Psychological studies have shown that color affects mood, especially when it surrounds an entire environment like a room. Pastels can be calming, for example, whereas bold primaries or secondaries can be energizing. You can learn more about color psychology for interior decorating in posts like this one from Freshome, but the gist is that repainting a room can alter the way it makes you feel when you enter it.

Outside of emotion, interior wall colors also affect factors like light travel and coordination with décor. Painting a room in a lighter shade can make a dark and uninviting room suddenly bright and cheerful while also saving you money on lighting costs.

Add Value to Your Home on the Cheap

Because of all the above reasons, painting a wall can often take the place of a pricier home remodel for people who want to increase their home’s resale value. Clean-looking rooms with well-protected walls and a calculated emotional effect all equate to a better buyer experience when they come to view than if you had left your walls the way they were.

These benefits can be had without nearly as much labor, materials or disruption to your home as other, more involved renovations. Most real estate professionals in the Philadelphia area will recommend that you at least consider repainting in order to increase the value and appeal of your property without requiring a huge investment.

ServiceWhale can make it even cheaper and easier to have your home’s interior repainting by helping you compare quotes with experienced painting contractors in your area. Click here to enter in your project information and receive real custom quotes from local painting crews without needing them to visit on-site first.