What Are the Advantages of Painting With a Roller?

If you are new to painting, you may have little experience with common painting tools, like sprayers, rollers, and brushes. Each tool has its purpose, and many projects will inevitably use all three. Today, however, we will discuss the advantages of using a paint roller and where the pros tend to one.

Speed and Volume

One of the most used advantages of a paint roller is that it applies a lot of paint quickly. Rollers come in several standard sizes and textures, each with its own unique advantages. The pros will often use a roller when the project is fairly small, and spraying would not be practical. An example might be painting a master bedroom with lots of heavy furniture. Spraying paint (especially indoors) often requires the use of drop cloths and other tools to prevent overspray from contacting anything but the surface to be painted. Rollers often reduce much of the need for protection of furniture and other obstacles because the paint can be very controlled in both volume and location.

Multiple Colors

When a project will involve more than one color, using rollers will often save time and money, because several can be used at once. Even upscale rollers are relatively inexpensive, so if a project will use more than one color, several rollers can be used simultaneously to make the project faster and avoid unnecessary cleaning. An example might be a dining room with wainscoting. Often the wainscoting trim will delineate two complementary colors, so the pros will often reuse rollers by soaking them in paint and immediately wrapping them in plastic, like a grocery store bag. This prevents the roller from drying out so that it can be reused the next day without cleaning.

Adding Texture

As mentioned earlier, rollers are available in various naps for applying paint, texture, or both. Rollers can be made from several materials, depending on the desired effect. Short nap rollers are great for applying paint to smooth surfaces, while longer nap rollers are fantastic for getting into hard textures. Rollers can be used to apply sand, drywall compound, or any number of textures commonly mixed with paint. Some rollers are even designed for specific uses, such as painting a textured ceiling.