If you’ve decided to paint your walls and done with washing them, here’s the right guide to help you what to do next. Washing your walls is the first step in painting. Once you’re done with it, the question arises; How long after washing walls can you paint on them?
How Long After Washing Walls Can You Paint?
The standard time to paint walls after washing them is after 24 hrs. or a day. However, it is dependent on factors like atmosphere, room temperature, humidity, etc.
You may or may not be able to dry the paint a little bit quicker depending upon these factors and how you manipulate them which may vary for your room conditions.
What Determines How Long After Washing The Walls, You Can Paint It?
There are some factors that are going to help you determine how long you should wait to paint which I have discussed below.
How does the atmosphere of your room affect the process of drying?
The major factor that is going to tell how long after washing walls you can paint, is the atmosphere of your room. The time you need to give your walls for drying can vary for different rooms and their atmospheric conditions. It includes two major parts.
Effect of temperature on the speed of drying walls
The temperature of your room also has a lot to do with the drying rate. The high temperatures usually dry the walls quickly. The heat is responsible to evaporate the wetness of walls due to the higher velocity of the molecules and in return dries it out (yeah, a bit of science there!).
The air circulation is also helpful to dry the walls out quickly. This circulating air takes the moisture away from the wall and dries it.
Effect of humidity
If there is more humidity in your room, it will take more time for the walls to dry. It usually affects the condition by adding water into the incompletely dried paint and makes it even more complicated to dry. Due to the present moisture in the air, it makes it difficult for the water on the walls to dry.
Hence, analyze these conditions of your room and then decide after how long you should start painting the walls.
How To Make Your Walls Dry Quicker, A Simple Tip!
To increase the speed of drying, open all the windows and doors of your room for ventilation. In addition to this, you can set some fans in your room in front of the walls and let them do the work! If you have an extremely humid condition in your room and your walls are still not drying after giving them a whole day, put some heavy-duty fan in front of the walls to be dried. It will help you out significantly!
If You Have A Very Humid Room Condition
If your room’s humidity is a whole lot more to be dried easily without any appliance, then you need to do a little effort for it to dry perfectly. The markets have some products regarding this concern which can help your walls attain that look even if you have damp walls and humid air in your room. These helping products are called Dehumidifiers. You can easily have them available on Amazon over a great variety and every price range. I found this one to be good on Amazon
How You Should Use A Dehumidifier To Dry Walls
A dehumidifier is going to take all the moisture in your room away from the moisture source. So, when you are about to start operating it, close the doors and windows so that the moisture does not escape anywhere. If your room isn’t very large, but the dehumidifier right in the center of your room and switches it on. It will start doing its work.
If you have a very large room and you think it will take much more time to remove the moisture out, then go for placing it near the moisture source or where you find the most moisture in your room.
The Humidity Percentage Of Your Room Will Tell You How Long After Washing Walls You Can Paint On Them
Now moving into the depth of the topic, I will let you know how long after washing the walls you can paint on them.
So, the fact is, that it’s not that any place which is humidity-free, ever. Every place has some percentage of humidity and this is just going to tell you for how long you should wait.
If you have a less humid room whose humidity ranges from 40 to 50 percent, there’s nothing to worry about. Just let the washed walls set for a maximum of 24 hrs. and it will turn out perfect for you to paint the walls after a day.
However, if you have a moderate humidity percentage in your room that you are observing might need some additional effort, don’t worry. It won’t take much longer, too. Just wait for 48 hrs. and it will hopefully turn out dried after this time.
At the first step, I would suggest you wait and let the walls dry naturally in their own way with the already available helping aids (doors, windows, Ac, etc.). But if you have to paint your walls sooner and you don’t want to ruin it too, then you can have some aid from a dehumidifier.
And in the Last case, if there’s a humidity percentage above 85 percent, then you should be giving a great time to the walls to dry out completely which is going to be a bit of a slow process. Using a dehumidifier will make a great difference in the drying rate too, but you still need to be patient for them to be able to paint on.
Recheck if your wall has completely dried: Depending on the condition, if you see there’s still some wetness left on your wall, you must give it some more time until it dries out completely. Keep this fact in view that without the walls being completely dried, the paint can never turn out to be the way you expect it to be.
What Will Happen If You Start Painting On The Walls Without Fully Drying Them?
If you start painting over the damp walls, it will cause bubbles on the surface of the wall and will result in an uneven, unsaturated, patchy look on the wall. Moreover, you might see the paint peeling off from the surface soon after you are done with your work.
So, there’s no use of spending so much of your efforts and time over something that does not turn out the way you want it to. Hence, I recommend you wait for a day before starting to paint your wall. It will settle the texture of the wall on which you are planning to paint, and perfectly dried walls will make sure to give you a pleasant look.
FINAL VERDICT
Always remember, all of your efforts in cleaning the wall, washing it, rinsing the excess soap and water off, will be ruined if you don’t give enough time to let the walls dry and start painting the walls right away.
A bright and saturated color on your wall can only be achieved if you’ve dried the walls to their fullest for 24 hrs. Any kind of application is suitable only after the time it dries out completely and forms a smooth and clean, stains-free texture and surface. I hope you got all your answers for the question “How Long After Washing Walls Can You Paint?”.
Have a good time painting your walls. 🙂
Beatrix Ainsley (Bea to her friends) is an abstract artist who was heavily inspired in her twenties by the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s. Since then Bea has acquired three degrees in Science, Education and most importantly Fine Art. Her art works showcase exploring emotion and introspection of self. To achieve this – the use of bold, sweeping, intricate layers of color, and spontaneity of form is enhanced by reflecting on decades of life experiences. Bea has amassed a vast knowledge of art in all its forms, and hopes to pass it on with her contributions here.
