Paint Jobs: One coat or two coats?

When you tackle one or various paint jobs, regardless of the type you find yourself asking the same question over and over again: do I apply one coat or two coats of paint? Well, today we will try to answer that question.

First, there are many factors to take into consideration, the first one is the kind of surface you are going to paint. This is very important because if the surface, wood for example, is very porous it will absorb a lot of paint ergo it will need a second coating for the color to set in.

But there is also another scenario, what if you are painting a surface that previously had a dark color. Well, regardless if you use the paint without even been thinned, you will need to coats, this is because of the theory of color, a light color can’t go over a dark color. Well, in painting it can, but only after two coats that’s for sure.

And the third scenario is the result of a mistake we could make (and that it is more common than you think) and that is to excessively thin the paint. This is a very common mistake and results in a layer so thin that the color of the paint is barely visible, ergo, making us apply not two but even three coats of paint to have a decent result.

Definitely knowing what surface are we going to paint and make sure that we thin the paint correctly will guarantee that, in most cases, one coat of paint is more than enough. One more thing to take into consideration is that if the paint is not too thin, and we don’t get the brush in the paint enough we will find ourselves with clear spots all over the surface.

That’s why we always recommend for you to have a professional in hand that can guide you and tell you the best way to tackle your paint jobs in terms of surface, type of paint and paint tools you want to use.