For many homeowners a new floor (carpet, hardwood, vinyl, laminate, etc.) and a fresh coat of paint go hand in hand. The floor may even be considered the “fifth wall” of the room. The new flooring may not go with the wall color, or it may just be time for everything to be new like putting on an entirely new outfit.
As flooring professionals, we regularly hear from customers that they’re waiting to schedule their new floor installation until after some painting is completed. However, we and even most professional painters agree that the opposite is, in fact, true. This isn’t simply because “we said so”, so allow me to explain the reasons.
Often the assumption is that you don’t want to risk getting paint on the new flooring. Without hesitation I can say that even a mediocre painter can protect the new floors much better than even the best flooring professionals can protect fresh paint. Painters can use drop cloths held in place by gravity. Flooring professionals can’t tape or pin anything to the freshly painted walls/trim.
Removing old flooring comes with varying degrees of risk to walls, paint or trim. Even relatively easy carpet removal may involve scraping up pad staples that can fly across the room and scratch or knick freshly painted walls. And pulling up carpet can also fling dust, carpet fibers or other debris like pet fur into the air that stick to a fresh coat of paint even if it is dry to the touch but not fully cured.
Hard surface flooring removal can be even more dangerous involving power tools like air hammers, scrapers, grinders and more brute force and can create even more potential mess.
Paint goes from wet, to dry to cured. Depending on the paint, number of coats and how applied that time frame may be different. This may be like paying and tipping for a manicure before the final coat is applied so you don’t risk damaging the finish while digging through your purse or pockets. Even “soft” flooring like carpet can be risky. The backing of the carpet is generally rough, and the carpet is brought into the space bigger than the space itself with that rough backing in contact with the trim and possibly the walls. Beyond that, power stretchers putting pressure on freshly painted trim could mar that paint as well.
Hard surface flooring has even more risk with more aggressive installation tools not to mention other potential threats such as leveling compounds or patch, adhesives, thinsets, grout, stains, finishes, etc.
For some flooring, baseboards may need to be removed and reset or replaced altogether. Obviously installing anything new would then need to be painted, but even reset trim will have new nail holes to fill and new caulk to be applied which leads to needing new paint. For many hard surface flooring installations new shoe molding will be installed that needs to have nail holes filled, caulk applied and then finish painted or at least touched up.
For most flooring installations, the room needs to be free of furniture and other contents. But for many rooms, the contents can be moved to the center to paint the walls. So the painter may need to move the furniture out, but the flooring crew most certainly will need to unless the client is handling it themselves. Some furniture pieces may be difficult or awkward to move in and out of the space, and that too can present a risk to the walls even if done by professionals.
Most of this advice is centered around the finish painting of a room or trim. If the walls are new or in bad shape they may need other prep work to get them ready for paint. Things like drywall taping, patch, sanding or wallpaper removal can certainly make sense before the new floors. Just leave the finish painting until after the floors are done.
With the color of flooring and walls being great ways to change the look of a room, it’s also important they work together. If that didn’t matter, you probably aren’t panting and flooring at the same time anyway. Most of our clients do a great job picking both flooring and paint colors from smaller swatches and things work out great. But if they don’t it is MUCH easier to have all the floors installed and then make an adjustment to paint color after the first wall is painted than it is to change flooring color after you put the first section of flooring next to the freshly painted walls.
And when it comes to color, there are WAY more paint colors to choose than flooring colors. If you really like a particular carpet style/design it may only come in 10 colors or on the high end 60. And while there are hundreds of pre-finished hardwood or synthetic floors on the market, each particular style will only offer a handful of colors. So pick the floor you love and you’ll have an easier time finding a paint than if you do it the other way around.
If you disagree with the suggested order, or if the schedules or phase of a project simply don’t align and painting must be done first, then we strongly encourage you to plan for a post-flooring visit from the painters for any touch up. Of course if you are the painter, keep those cans and brushes handy, you may need them!
For the purposes of this topic, we assumed a flooring and paint refresh, not a more expansive full remodel. If the project is more involved, then we’d suggest an order such as: