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What is the best paint roller thickness to use?
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Smooth surface? 1/4 or 3/8 seems to work for me
Different paints may like different rollers
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It really depends on your walls and your paint. Rough/textured walls, textured ceilings, long nap. Smooth walls shorter nap. Cheap paint w/ poor coverage, longer nap. More $ paint, might be fine with a short nap.
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(07-20-2018, 12:43 PM)Gibbcutter Wrote: What is the best paint roller thickness to use?
Use the 1" diameter rollers instead of the larger diameter. Reason? Less roller lines and better paint application. Once the pro painters who taught me showed me that tip, I quit using the bigger ones almost completely, even on exterior jobs.
What that does is give you much better control on how much paint is applied, no matter what nap is used. However, the smaller diameter does make the nap thickness more important.
In my experience, gloss and semi gloss on a flat surface needs the thinnest nap. Eggshell/satin needs a slightly thicker nap, and matte/flat needs a nap that is thicker yet.
For textured surfaces(popcorn/knockdown/etc.) a still thicker(max thick) nap roller.
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I just had my arched ceiling family room painted by Pro's and I asked what nap they used and he said 3/4". I compared the finished to mine that I used in the bedrooms and it looked just as good. I think the reason they used the heavy nap roller was to save on time.