The Painter's Corner: Paint Rollers

You’ve bought your paint, you’ve bought your brushes. However, you don’t intend to paint those vast expanses of wall surface with a brush, it will take forever. So you need a paint roller and roller frame. If you go to your paint center or home store, you’ll find a large selection of various sized frames and rollers. There are large ones, small ones, fuzzy rollers, and smooth foam rollers, cheap and expensive varieties. Which ones are the right ones to buy? First, determine the project at hand. If you are painting a room with a lot of open wall space, you need a paint roller frame that will get the job done well in the least amount of time. The typical size of frame and roller is 7-9. They come bigger 12 to 18 inches, but unless you are a pro, this is highly impractical for a number of reasons. They also come smaller; 3-4 trim rollers and mini-rollers useful for furniture, shelves, trim and decorative painting and crafts projects.

It’s important to make sure the roller frame you buy is of high quality. A good frame has a heavy duty wire cage, which grips the roller tube tightly. It should also have a threaded end, to accommodate an extender pole. Cheap frames usually have thinner wires that can’t grip and allow the tube to slip. The best frames have bearing surfaces on the end, which allow for smooth coverage, as the bearings make the roll turn evenly and consistantly, which in addition to looking good, puts less pressure on the back, shoulders and neck. A smooth flow means less roller lines to go back and repaint, which means less time and work to paint the project. Premium brush manufacturers such as Purdy and Wooster also make roller frames and paint rollers. A good roller frame is less than ten dollars.

Now the rollers themselves. There are different materials and thicknesses for different jobs. The key to a successful paint job is in an educated purchase. Look at the inside core of the roller. A cheap roller has a cardboard core, like the cardboard core of a roll of paper towels. This core soon gets soaked from the water in acrylic paints, and loses its shape, or starts to fall apart, and will not stay on the frame. This is especially so if the surface of the roller is glued on, as the water and solvents in paints can dissolve the glue. A good roller has a treated waterproofed paper core, or a plastic one. The outside surface is not glued on, but heat fused to the core, thereby insuring long use, and reuse. The surface fibers are either synthetic, polyurathane foam, or natural fibers such as mohair, sheepskin or lamb’s wool. Natural fibers should be used with oil-based paints, for acrylic or latex water-based paints, only use synthetics or foam.

The nature of the surface you are painting determines the nap or pile of the fibers on the roll. Rollers come in pile thicknesses from 1/16 to 1 1/2. As a rule of thumb, the rougher the surface, the longer the pile. This makes sense, a fuzzier pile has lots of hair to hold paint, and get into rough surfaces like brick. A flat sheetrock or plaster wall needs a smoother surface. Paint rollers actually work because of the vaccuum caused by the rolling motion pulls the paint from the roller on to the wall. A smooth nap of 1/8- 1/4 is good for plaster, sheetrock, masonite or smooth wood. For slightly rough surfaces like sand finished and textured plaster, acoustic tile, poured concrete or rough wood, use 3/8 to ½ nap. For rough surfaces like concrete block, stucco, shingles, stone or cinder blocks, use a roller with a nap of ¾ to 1 ½ inches. Also on the market are specialty rollers with stencils, cut outs, sponged effects, ragging, and other decorative special paint effects, so you are only limited by your imagination in what you can achieve.

Rollers can be covered with a plastic bag with the ends secured with a wire tie for short term storage, such as overnight. To clean a water-based paint roller, paint out onto the wall as much paint as possible, then sqeeze the excess paint down the roller, back into the tray or can. Rinse with water, massaging out as much paint as possible, keep rinsing until water runs clear. Let dry naturally, and store wrapped in a paper towel. If you are using cheap rolls, and you aren’t already exhausted from the uneven paint job and inevitable pieces of wooly lint on your surface, you should paint onto the surface as dry as possible and allowed the roller to dry out completely, and then discard. Next time, do yourself a favor, and use a better roller.

Next week: the remainder of necessary tools for a long lasting and professional looking DIY paint job. The Painter’s Corner will be a regular feature of Brownstoner. Look for it again next week.
The Painter’s Corner: Brushes [Brownstoner]
The Painter’s Corner: Paint 101, part 2 [Brownstoner]
The Painter’s Corner: Paint 101, part 1 [Brownstoner]
Photo: tipnut.com