While remodeling your room, many times you might end up having an extra bucket of ceiling paint. Then you might think, can you use ceiling paint on the wall?
Yes, you can! But that comes with a price. There are considerations that you must know before making the decision. Then let me know if you can paint the wall with the ceiling, and what should be avoided.
What Makes Ceiling Paint Differ from Wall Paint?
For using ceiling paint on the wall, you need to differentiate the two paints by their properties, and know what they can and cannot do.
First, start with ceiling paint. Ceiling paint is flat paint that hides the blemishes. It doesn’t follow the reflection theory of light. In case you want to hide marks or bumps on your wall, ceiling paint will be handy.
What ceiling paint differs from wall paint is the viscosity. The thickness of ceiling paint is visibly thick enough to stay attached to the ceiling. Or else, there would have been a chance of dripping.
That’s why you can’t use the wall paint on the ceiling. Viscosity also ensures durability. But here we are talking about the other way round.
Ceiling paint gives the advantage of not repainting more often. Not only that, ceiling paint has a great sealing option. This sealing protects the wall from getting damaged by marks.
Talking about energy consumption, what do you thick application of which paint need more work and time? It’s the wall paint as you will end up providing multiple layers before the finish. One layer is enough for ceiling paint.
Ceiling paint might seem less appealing but it can resist mold and mildew. Again, wall paints are more suitable for scrubbing, whereas ceiling paint is for dusting.
When One Uses Ceiling Paint on Wall?
What could be possible cases or when you are allowed to use ceiling paint as wall paint? You need to ask yourself the question because ceiling paint won’t run every characteristic of wall paint.
- When you want something classy and paint the room using a singular color. You might have already seen houses where rooms are painted with only one color, and the white ones catch our eyes.
- You can use the paint for stairs in hiding the marks, bumps, or other imperfections caused due to traffic over it.
- When you prefer convenience more, go for ceiling paint.
Using Ceiling Paint as Undercoat
You can use ceiling paint as the prime base for the wall before painting with wall paint. That’s what we call undercoat. The ceiling paint might step backward when it’s come to using as wall paint.
But it’s a shame not to admire how good ceiling paint can be while applying as a primer. Not only you can apply it on the wall but also on door and window frames.
Using a Mixture of Wall Paint and Ceiling Paint?
What if you want to mix the ceiling paint and the wall paint and produce a third shade? Is that even possible?
There is no hard and fast rule that you cannot mix. It would be a better mixture if you mix the same type. Don’t end up mixing latex with oil, for example.
You will be excited to mix both paints and create something new, but the difference in the viscosity will cause dripping. It would be best if you apply them separately regarding them as a primer and main layer of paint.
Why separate applications won’t drip while mixing them will be dripping? Because you will be allowing each layer to dry first. Thus, you will be having a complete package of durability and beauty.
Limited Finish Option of Ceiling Paint
Another important note is that ceiling paint doesn’t have enough finishes. When it comes to wall paint, finishes are something people like to decide first. Because it’s the game changer. In the end, finishes change the overall view of your room.
That’s why wall paint comes in multiple finishes. Due to the limitation of finishes ceiling paint has, you might step down from using ceiling paint on the wall. So, you must know what you can get from ceiling paint.
You will get an eggshell finish and the other one is a flat white finish. The second one is the most common. It’s a kind of matte finish.
Flat Finish
The flat finish of the ceiling paint gives a smooth texture. Hence you get to see the uniformity of your ceiling paint.
Where can you use this flat finish ceiling paint?
Uniformity matches formality. Formal rooms like the living and dining space would match this characteristic. Due to the minimal amount of light reflection in the flat finish, the marks and holes of the wall will be hidden.
If there are kids in your house, this ceiling paint could help a lot, as these rooms get marks a lot.
Another advantage is that it works in the singular layer. You must have provided multiple layers while painting the wall with semi-gloss or glossy kind of paint. Even when you are to give a touch-up to the old paint, you have to cover it all.
Because one more layer of wall paint makes a huge difference in the contrast with the surrounding wall color. However, you won’t face it with ceiling paint. Ceiling paint in multiple layers barely makes any difference in contrast.
Eggshell Finish
When you are doubtful about which ceiling paint to choose, the eggshell finish is the safer one. It will gradually suit the hallway along with the formal rooms. This paint reflects more and hence it’s termed a low-glossy finish.
When it comes to a comparison of the two paints, both are durable. However, you need to remember that a flat white finish is comparatively harder to clean than the eggshell one.
Things Ceiling Paint Don’t Do Well?
Ceiling paint has great advantages and you can use it on the wall though. But wall paints have other characteristics and jobs to do than just being a protective cover.
Wall paints come will designable properties. The color varieties and the finishes are mentionable limitations of ceiling paints. Again, it might not be able to withstand washing and scrubbing wall paints go through.
Things Ceiling Paint Does Well
So, far we have been talking about the possibility of using ceiling paints on the wall with its limitation. But you might get surprised to see how aesthetic the color looks after applying multiple layers.
Many artists used the trick to create something out of the trend. Other than that, the marks and bumps will get hidden within minutes by ceiling paints.
Termination
Now that you know, can you use ceiling paint on walls, hope you keep the key factors in mind while making the decision.
You can take the advantage of using ceiling paint on the wall but that comes with a limitation. However, there are also solutions to get the utmost output of the ceiling paint while eliminating the downsides as well.
FAQs Section
When it comes to price, ceiling paint doesn’t differ much from wall paint. It’s almost the same. So, why prefer ceiling over wall paint? That’s to do when you are mostly out of options.
There is no restriction. You can eventually paint the ceiling with wall paint if you want to. However, it might not fulfill the purpose. Moreover, you might end up clearing the mess that occurred from paint dripping.
It takes an hour to dry. You don’t need to recoat it though. But if you want to, then recoat after two hours. The time of course differs. You can recoat only after an hour if it’s water-based paint. But brick paint needs four hours to be ready for a recoat.