Touching up is not automatic. Some paints will not touch up well, depending on the lighting in the room and the type and sheen of the paint used. You will learn from this column, that flat paints usually touch up, and sheen paints may or may not, depending on the where the touch up is.
Best practices
- Use the same paint that you used originally, Paint, like wallpaper runs, will differ slightly in color from batch to batch. The best color match will come from the exact paint that was used for the original painting. Most interior latex paints will not noticeably fade unless they are pretty old, so even if it has been a few years, you should be able to blend in the touch up. See How to Store Paint for maintaining the freshness of the original paint. If the paint is old, brush out a test sample to be sure it dries properly and looks good before putting it on the wall.
- Use the same applicator as the original paint. Rollers leave a different texture than a brush. The difference in texture will give a slight difference in color appearance. Sprayed paint looks different than rolled paint for a few different reasons. Use the same applicator.
Flat paint
If you painted your house or room with flat paint, you are in luck. Most of the time you can touch up on flat paint. The downside of flat paint is that they will mark and mar more easily than a sheen paint. The upside is that they do touch up. Generally, the flatter the paint the better the touch up. There is a reason builder’s flat paints are so flat, it is not to skimp on price, it is for touch up. Building a new house requires a lot of touch up at the end of construction. Plumbers, electricians and other trades will inadvertently scuff or mark up the walls in the process of doing their job. At the end of it all, the painter will come in and “touch up”. Builder’s flats, while they don’t wash up, they do touch up.
Good paints for touch up: Sherwin Williams Promar 200 and 400 (400 flat has excellent touch up), Superpaint interior and exterior flat.
Sheen paint
Unless the lighting is poor in a particular room, you will not be able to touch up a sheen paint -on a interior wall or ceiling. With sheen paints comes better wash-ability and less marring, but with less ability to touch up. Additionally, sheen paints will usually need to be deglossed before painting out from breaking point to breaking point. The exception to this would be touching up trim enamel with an oil based enamel.
Breaking point to breaking point
If you have to touch up on a wall, you will need to paint out the wall from a breaking point (end of the wall or other dividing point in the wall) to breaking point. If you just spot the paint right in the middle of a wall it will stand out as a blotch on the wall. If the lighting is poor, or if the touch up is down near the floor and well below eye level, you may be able to spot a touch up on a sheen paint. Try spotting it first, if it shows, you will need to paint from break point to break point.
Trim touch up
Trim can usually be touched up, regardless of the sheen. Because of the narrowness of the substrate, you usually won’t pick up on the touch up. The best touch ups on trim will be where the trim was painted with a brush and you in turn, touch up with a brush. Keep in mind, oil based enamels will yellow over time, making a color matched spot touch up with oil difficult. Touching up with latex enamel may require deglossing for adhesion, this will effectively require the touch up to be from breaking point to breaking point and a deglossing of the same area. If the latex paint to be touched up is freshly painted (within a couple of weeks) you can usually touch up without deglossing, because the previous coat is not fully cured.
Sprayed paint
If the paint was sprayed, and is anything but flat, you will not be able to spot touch up. You will have to brush or roll from breaking point to breaking point. This is also true with aerosol spray painted items (in which case you will need to mask off from breaking point to breaking point and re-spray). Spray paint must be applied into a wet painted surface, if not, you will get a “halo” of dry spray around the attempted touch up. The dry spray halo, draws the eye to the touch up spot, and cries out “look here”.
Flat sprayed paint
If the original paint was flat, you may be able to touch it up with a spot spraying (using the same paint and type of sprayer as used originally, but, this is not worth the time and effort. It is simpler and faster to roll out from breaking point to breaking point. You might get away with a spot brushing or rolling, but the color is usually a bit different out of a sprayer than when applied by a roller or brush. Try it first and see, if it shows, you will need to go from break point to break point.
To touch up flat paint you will need to use the same applicator as the original paint. If the original paint was rolled on, you will need to roll the paint on for touch up. Sometimes flat paints are not really very flat, these flat paints will not touch up as invisibly as a dead flat paint. Deep tones will also not touch up as well as pastel colors or white. The rule for good touch up would be: the closer to white and the flatter the finish - the better the touch up.
Touching Up Paint
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