Painting my son's new bedroom - how many primer coats?

[Buff]

With my 2nd son getting to be too big for the cradle it will soon be time to move in into the crib. Unfortunately neither of my sons will let each other sleep if they were in the same room so they can't share the room upstairs.

So, in order to help my 2.5 year old to want to move to the room in the basement we are painting it in the colours of everyone's favorite hockey team.

The previous colours were atrocious. The room has a ledge around it and above the ledge is a very vibrant lime green, and below the ledge is a similar to the New York Rangers blue. What we will be doing is painting the walls all white, with the exception of an accent wall, which will be Calgary Flames red. The closet will also be Calgary Flames red.

I've already done a coat of primer on the walls that will be white. This is where my lack of painting expertise comes in. You can tell that there was lime green and blue below that coat of primer. I've always assumed that you do a couple of coats of primer before you do a couple of coats of the paint when you are painting over a dark colour. However my mother-in-law (whom I never want to believe, no matter how many times she proves me wrong) says that we only need to do one coat of primer.

Will it hurt to apply two coats of primer? Since I'll have so much primer left over it may not hurt to apply a 2nd coat of primer so I won't run out of paint by applying two or three coats later on.

When I get to doing the red I'll probably have to do quite a bit of coats of paint. We got special red/grey primer for that wall. But I remember doing another room with maroon paint (bottom half of wall) and it took something like 5 coats of paint to get good coverage. If I do 2 coats of primer 1st, will it help reduce the need to do many coats of paint?

[arsenal]

you dont have to do another coat of primer. you can if you want, but generally one coat is fine

[Reggie Dunlop]

Throw on some more primer. Can't hurt.

[Frequitude]

One coat is fine for sure. You won't even notice. When I painted my house I started with 2 primer coats on the first room and by time I got to the last room I couldn't be bothered to do any. Looked the same everywhere.

[devel]

If you're painting red then you should be doing a coat of "pepto pink" primer instead of white. Talk to the paint expert wherever you got your paint. Red is the absolute worst color to paint btw!

A year ago we painted our den Flames red and it took 1 coat of Pepto pink primer and 5 coats of red! After 3 coats of the red we were thinking that we made a mistake of epic proportions because it looked so bad - all streaky! Looks incredible now, but I doubt I'll ever paint red again.

Oh, and make sure you let it dry at least 12 hours between coats.

[Buff]

We got that pink primer for the red paint. We fully expect to paint several coats of red too. When we (and by we I mean my wife and her mother) painted the upstairs spare bedroom (before we had kids) they primed with regular primer, no tint, and they painted the bottom half of the walls maroon. Took them several coats. I thought it was 5 but after I asked my wife it turns out that they did 8 coats. Part of the excessive coats is the fact that they didn't wait more than an hour between coats... it felt dry so they painted again.

[BOSSY]

Ahhh... The Pepto pink primer - scared the hell out of my six year old son when we did his room in Flames colors... we told him we decided to go with that pink instead of the Flames red and he was pissed! Make sure you get the pink on as even as you can and that will save you some coats on the red if not it might take quite a few to get the red even - on the flip side if you use the Flames black it covers really well - good luck!

[Ice]

Definitely use pink primer. I have six coats of red paint in my den and if you look real close, you can still see spots that don't have the best coverage.

Painting walls red is a real chore. I don't envy you.

[Cube Inmate]

Since we've got a week-old thread on painting, I thought I'd resurrect this instead of starting a new one of my own. I've spent the last 3 nights attempting to paint a single bathroom, I was hoping to tap into the keg of CP knowledge and ask for your best painting tips.

-How to best avoid lap lines with a roller?
-How long after painting can I mask the new paint safely?
-Any good techniques to get into the awkward (e.g., too small for a roller) areas with a brush and not have it look obviously crappy compared with the rest of the wall?
-Is it even possible to clean a roller?
-When doing 2 different colours on adjacent walls, should I do the light or the dark wall first (the old colour is light)?

I'd enjoy hearing any good tips or cautionary tales that you have from your own experiences. The stories of the 8-coat red wall above are scary as hell, because I'm currently trying to do a red myself.

[Buff]

For the small areas you can get an edger. I've only had time to prime so far and will finish up the room this weekend. However, we painted a wall last summer (and did like 3 coats of primer, lol) and we used an edger. It is like a little rectangular pad with a handle, the pad is replaceable.

I've heard that if you are painting two different colours that you should paint the lighter colour first. So I'd assume that you want to paint over the darkest colour first.

You can clean rollers with soap and water. I used dish soap. It isn't perfect but you can get two or three uses out of the roller. More if you're good/lucky.

I don't have an exact technique to avoid lap lines. I find as you get closer to your last coat that you don't see the lap lines so much. I've actually wondered at times if I missed a small strip (though that is going back to the priming 3 times and painting another 2 or 3 coats.). This time I only primed once and I wasn't worried about lap lines as I knew there was going to be a few coats of paint. To avoid drip lines I just go over with drip line with the roller.

[Rathji]

If you are planning on using the roller again soon, rinse it and double bag it it inside a grocery bag, and squeeze most of the air out, then wrap and elastic or twist tie around the handle.

Keeps the roller fresh for the next use if you are using the same color.

[Isbrant]

For painting red, General Paint sells (or at least used to) a red based paint. It comes from the factory as red and can be further tinted. It greatly reduces the number of coats required.

I don't know if any of the other paint stores have something similar. I think the brand name was Franzen or something like that.

There is also a yellow base that is better than regular paint for bright yellow but it still takes many coats for coverage. I guess that is better than dozens of coats.

They should have some cards that are striped black and white they can paint over to show you how well (or poorly) a colour hides what is beneath.

[someguy51]

We painted a room in our house Flames red. (the "official" paint from Home Depot). We did one coat of primer and then had to do 4 coats of the red. After the second red coat it still looked terrible, but starting on the third coat it started to look good.