Paint Brushes

The most important thing about painting, whether it be painting a house or any other building, is to have the correct equipment. Good painting tackle is expensive, but in the long run it will save you money. If you can’t afford to purchase all the equipment, you may be able to hire it. One thing though – do purchase some good quality paint brushes and rollers, even if you don’t invest in anything else. A set of good paint brushes and rollers can last you for years, but those cheap and nasty ones you often see on specials are not worth a quarter of the money they are asking and it’s ten to one that they were made in China. If you buy the really good paint brushes and you look after them properly, you won’t be disappointed.

As soon as you get home wash your new paint brushes in hot soapy water, rinse them and flick them dry. Either hang them on a nail or store them flat or with their bristles up – never store paint brushes standing with on their bristles in a jar of water or turpentine. If you have to store paint brushes in water or turpentine then suspend them in it so that the bristles do not touch the bottom of the receptacle – you will ruin them for good if you do. Many new paint brushes have a hole in the handle from which you can suspend them – if they don’t then you can just drill a hole there. If you know that you’re not going to be using the brushes for a long time you can suspend them in linseed oil, which is less likely to evaporate than turpentine. If you’re going to be storing your paint brushes after using them, make sure that every last drop of paint has been washed out of them before storage. Paint brushes that have been used for acrylic or PVA paint can be washed out in soapy water, and you can use Polyclens and then soapy water on paint brushes that have been used for oil based paints such as gloss paint.

You can use a good quality synthetic brush for either acrylic or enamel paints – the more expensive the paint brush the better it is. A paint brush with hog bristles is the best one to use for fine gloss enamel, but don’t use it for acrylic as hog bristles absorb water in the paint and are ruined. How can you tell if a brush is a good one? Take a good look at the bristles – in a good brush they are of different lengths allowing paint to be carried over the length of the brush. A really good paint brush has tapered bristles thin at the tip and thick at the handle end. The tapered bristles allow paint to be released slowly, uniformly and easily. The really superior paint brushes have the ends of the bristles tipped to give a flowing velvety painting edge with almost invisible brushmarks. These brushes are very expensive and might be out of your reach.