by Catherine Lear

Created on: September 12, 2009   Last Updated: March 28, 2011

Now be honest who when painting woodwork or painting walls have put down their paint brushes and rollers and let them dry out?  We have all done it at sometime or the other haven't we, painted our rooms and left the paint brushes to clean themselves and when we have come to use them again they are all hard and unusable.

Cleaning a paint brush or roller after painting is very important, after all you will have paid quite a lot of money for these items and you will not want to let the paint dry on them will you. Once the paint has dried on the paintbrushes, it will be very hard for you to get the dried paint of them so that they work as well as before.

There are two main sorts of paints that you will use to paint your home with, they are water based paints that you will paint your walls with, they are called emulsion paints, these paints are the easy sort of paint to clean, as they are water based. Then there is the paint that you paint onto wood like the skirting boards or your doors. These are a little bit more difficult in cleaning as the paint is made of various compounds and the main compound will be oil. You will find that these paints will be called gloss paint, either the non-drip kind or the runny kind, with these sorts of paints will come the undercoat paint this is the paint that you paint onto the wood before you gloss.

First, we will take the water based emulsion paint. To clean either the paintbrush or the roller is quite easy; primarily make sure that you get rid of all the surplus paint that is still on the paintbrush or roller, do this by taking a clean rag and wiping the paintbrush and roller onto it. Then put the rag into a refuse bin, the paintbrush, or roller is now free from any paint that will drip onto the floor. Now as the paint is water based, just run your cold-water tap and clean your paintbrushes or rollers under the running water. You will find that the paint will come out of your tools quite easy. Make sure that all the paint comes out you will find that as you clean the tools the water that is cleaning the paintbrushes or rollers will run clear, when this happens you have cleaned the paintbrushes to the best of your ability. All you do now is take a clean cloth and dry them on it, store them with the bristles standing up in a small container.

The cleaning of oil-based paints is a little bit harder; you must never use water to clean these, as it is a futile gesture. Again, get rid of any surplice paint that is on your paintbrush, you must now clean them in a white spirit; you can buy white spirit from any good hardware store. I find the best way to clean the paintbrushes is to take a small glass jar and half fill it with the white spirit, if I have not finished painting I just leave the paintbrush in the jar until next day and then just wipe with a clean cloth. If I have finished then I clean properly by dipping the paintbrush into the jar and wiping, keep doing this until all the paint is of the paintbrush. You may find that you will have to change the white spirit for cleaner spirit at least three times. Once clean wipe dry and again store with the bristles standing up. I always with gloss paint use the same paintbrush to paint white paint, I will then use one more to paint lets say blue paint or yellow paint, I never use the same paintbrush with any other colour I keep white on white blue on blue, yellow on yellow, the reason for this is no matter how hard you try you will never get rid of the paint colours, there will always be a faint touch of the colour left, and this will have a detrimental effect on the colour paint that you are painting.

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