How to Paint the Ceiling

Lift and brighten any space in your home by refreshing your ceiling with a new coat of paint. Follow these tips to help you avoid lap marks and end up with professional-quality results.

Step 1: Prep Room

Before you can begin painting your ceiling, you need to prep the room. Cover furnishings and flooring with drop cloths to protect surfaces from paint splatters. Even better, relocate furnishings to another area of the house so you can move around the room unencumbered.

Protect the top of the wall or crown molding with painters tape unless you plan to paint the wall. In this case, you can overlap the wall slightly and paint over it later. Protect the edges of light-fixture rims or canopies that touch the ceiling using painter’s tape, or unscrew and drop the canopy slightly away from the ceiling so you can paint near the opening. When you finish painting, return the canopy to its original position. Protect ceiling-fan blades with plastic or newspaper secured with tape.

Step 2: Clean Ceiling

Make sure you have a sturdy, safe stepladder that remains steady as you reach for the ceiling. Shine a light on the ceiling so you can spy imperfections and fill with spackling compound. Let filler dry and sand smooth. If your room has a popcorn ceiling texture that you’d like to remove, start here for how-to instructions, and remember that you’ll first need to check for the presence of asbestos.

Next, block any stains you’ve spotted. Whether they’re spots from grease, smoke, or a leaky roof, cover ceiling stains first with a stain-blocking primer so the color won’t leach through the finish coat.