How do you paint a hall stairs and landing?

Painting a hall, stairs and landing for a lot of people is a daunting task and too much for them to tackle themselves, so they call a professional decorator like myself to do it for them. A lot of people will not have the ladder to aid them to reach the tallest part, or the stairs are an awkward shape.

Having the right tools makes it safe and easier to do, safety should always be in your mind when painting and decorating but especially if you are painting and decorating your hall, landing and stairs. Falling off a ladder whilst working on a stairway can be very painful.

Painting a hall, stairs and landing

Painting a hall, landing and stairs is just like painting any other interior room, you start at the top and work down.

So, start with preparing the walls, filling and holes and cracks, then paint the ceiling and coving, if you have any. Paint the picture rail next, if you have one, then emulsion the walls, if you have a dado emulsion down to that, then paint the dado before painting the remaining walls below the dado rail. This will save the newly painted wood work getting splashed with emulsion.

Finally, paint the stair stringers (the bit that goes up each side), the spindles and handrail and skirting boards.

And don’t forget the loft hatch if it’s in the hallway.

Wallpapering a hall, stairs and landing

If you are going to wallpaper your hallway, landing and stairs it is similar to wallpapering and interior room, you do all the preparation first, then you paint the ceiling and coving, then paint any woodwork such as picture rail, dado rail and the the stair stringers, spindles and handrail and also the skirting boards.

Once all the paint is dry, the final job is to wallpaper your hall, landing and stairs.

Useful links

Below is a list of useful links you may find help you when either painting or wallpapering your hallway, stairs and landing.

• Wallpaper calculator
• Paint calculator
• Ceiling wallpaper calculator
• How to wallpaper
• How to wallpaper around a door
• How to wallpaper around a window or door reveal

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Wallpapering around an arch or round window

Wallpapering can be tricky for many people but they are willing to have a go, but wallpapering around an arch or a round window often confuses people and puts them off tackling the job and can be too much for the casual DIYer. Knowing how to tackle it is the key and then the job isn’t so hard after all.

If you search our blog for wallpapering you will find several tips on wallpapering techniques from how to wallpaper around a door and window reveal, to how to wallpaper a fire breast wall.

Wallpapering an archway

Archways are often used as a way of joining two room together and to add interest to a room, they can be single door width or double or span an entire rooms width, whichever you have the principle of wallpapering the archway is the same.

If you know how to wallpaper a straight wall your halfway there. You would start to wallpaper as you normally would, from a corner. Once you come to the arch you hang the sheet on the face of the arch and then cut the paper that isn’t on the wall toward the corner edge of the arch, do this in small strips of around 1-2 centimetres and stick these to the underside of the arch.
Continue wallpapering the face of the arch and cutting strips and sticking to the underside of the arch until you have completed the arch, now you need to trim the pieces that go under the arch so that they are all an even length, this is done as the strips of paper under the arch will show through the infill paper when it dries so make them as neat as you can.

Continue reading How to wallpaper an arch or round window

Wallpapering around a window or door reveal

One of the things that puts people off from wallpapering is they are unsure how to tackle certain area’s. One of these is a window or door reveal.

It isn’t as daunting as it may first appear and I will try to explain how to do it below.

Where and how to start with the wallpaper

One of the first things I do, is measure using a roll of wallpaper to work out where the sheet will come at the reveal, in other words I see if the paper goes around the reveal and not stop on the external corner, this is bad! You may have to adjust where you start hanging the wallpaper or even start from another starting point, such as the other corner of the wall.

Once you have worked this out and made a plumb line on the wall you can start to hang the wallpaper. Hang the first sheet making sure you follow the plumb line to ensure it is straight and upright.

Now take the next sheet and match the pattern, if the wallpaper has one, and hang that sheet, then keep going until you reach the reveal.

Continue reading How to wallpaper around a window or door reveal