How to Paint Doors The Right Way

As a 16-year painter believe me if I tell you that most people do not know [tag]how to paint doors[/tag] correctly.

They do things like put masking tap all over the door nob and still get paint on it. You will see brush marks going sideways, (they don't go with the grain as the door and it's joints are put together).

They don't prime the door first when needed, (they put latex over oil-base or oil-base over old oil-base without priming first for adhesion) etc.

Painting doors is an acquired technique. My wife and I did a lot of painting in people's homes over the years and developed a professional way to make doors look like beautiful pieces of art.

When we paint doors, we leave the door on it's hinges, but we do take the door nob and it's parts right off the door no matter if it is a front entry door or a bedroom door. Also, there are many types of door styles. Some doors like back entry doors in newer homes are flat steel doors.

These flat surface doors can be made to look great by lightly sanding them smooth first and then priming and painting them using a shed-resistant speed roller or hot dog roller. The best ones to use are the Wooster Jumbo-Koter roller and it's cage frame.

We use a small paint tray for the roller and a pant brush for cutting in where the roller cannot get like the sides of the door and the doorway trim and jam. There is also a Pelican bucket that fits both your roller and paint brush. See your local paint store for that.

The other doors to paint are the hollow-core embossed type of panel doors and the heavier solid-wood panel doors. When painting these, you need to run your paint brush with the direction of the grains in the sections as they are assembled.

In paneled doors you have sections going up and down and sideways. You have to paint or brush in the direction of the grain to make it look right.

On wood paneled doors you can cover a larger area using a speed roller and stroke it out with your paint brush to save time, tack-up and to keep the brushed look. The average door and doorway takes about 3 hours "per side" doing two coats (a primer coat and a finish coat).

You don't just walk up to a door and paint it. Just like any woodwork, to do a professional job you want to do the necessary prep work first and apply two coats always for a nice solid finished look. I always use a "satin finish" in a top-quality paint like Benjamin Moore.

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