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Textured Walls

Intended or Not...

Intended or not... that is the question. Some people intentionally texture their walls... don’t ask me why, as a painter it breaks my heart! But, some people like it.

And then there are the walls that are just textured from paint jobs. When a roller moves up and down a wall it can leave a texture that looks like an orange peel. The more a wall is painted the more it will look like an orange peel. The shinier the walls the more pronounced it will be.

In and of itself maybe not a big deal but the challenge comes when you want to do a repair. If you have a nail hole and you put your mud on some of the mud will end up in the hole and some will end up in the orange peel. When you sand the wall, chances are you will leave some of the mud in the orange peel and the sanding will make that spot look perfectly smooth when the paint is applied. The problem is the area around the repair will still look like orange peel and you will end up with a wall with some flat spots and some orange peel spots... it’s not a good look!

To circumvent that for those little nail holes you can use a damp (not wet) rag and wipe off all the fill that didn’t land in the hole. If the repairs are bigger it’s a lot harder to control and I have yet to find a great solution to that that doesn’t involve bringing in a drywaller to apply a skim coat of mud on the entire wall. You can use a lower sheen paint to not draw attention to this situation, or strategically hang a painting!