When it comes to painting, the first idea that strikes us must be using rollers or sprayers. Needless to say, in comparison with rollers, the sprayers have more benefits to name.
People of all skill levels could use sprayers easily without any learning or training beforehand. Also, for all types of surfaces, sprayers could handle them well with perfect color.
However, some questions may arise when using sprayers: Does spraying use more paint than rolling? Is it paint saving to use sprayers? Are you stuck with these concerns?
Don’t worry, just keep scrolling through the following article to see the most satisfactory answer.
Does Spraying Use More Paint Than Rolling?
The answer is “ Yes”, spraying needs more paint than rolling. It is estimated that people tend to use roughly 33% more paint in spraying than that of rolling.
If you paint small things, the difference between sprayers and rollers is insignificant. However, with a large-scale one like a house, using just sprayers sounds a bit infeasible because it costs a big fortune.
It is understandable that when using a sprayer, the paint covered on the painting surface is denser and thicker as well. Sometimes, you may even mistakenly spray too much at some parts on the covering, which somehow wastes quite an amount of paint.
What is more, using a roller could evenly spread the amount of paint on the whole surface. For each time of rolling, it takes little paint with a thin layer on the wall. Therefore, you could estimate when the color is perfect for stopping brushing.
In contrast, there are many times, using sprayers is of great importance. Let’s see how much paint each kind of sprayer used to limit the amount of wasted paint as much as possible.
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Hvlp Spray Guns
= HVLP spray guns are a great recommendation you should not miss. The amount of paint it uses is roughly equivalent to many conventional rollers.
A clear explanation for this is that an HVLP spray gun has the predicting function to let you know how much paint you will spray. Also, unlike many sprayers, HVLP sprayers’ pressure is relatively smaller.
It means that you have to stay closer to the surface you paint, which helps to waste less paint.
A major drawback of this product is that you have to make sure the available paint is about more than 20% as a rule of thumb. Or else, you will get annoyed due to the running out of paint in the middle of your project.
In that case, you will inevitably waste a small amount of paint.
High-pressure Spray Guns
With high-pressure spray guns, you will stand more chance of over spraying, although you could predict the amount of paint.
If you are careful, controlling the spraying paint is quite easy to do. Here is a standard ratio you should follow. For each cup of paint for rolling, use 1.5 cups of spraying paint.
This ratio is quite simple to remember and follow. In case of cracking up the pressure, change the ratio to 2:1.
Recently, gravity-style guns could help to save paint significantly. Anyway, in general, these high-pressure guns still cost as far as 4 times more than conventional sprayers.
Therefore, though having a high level of paint efficiency, users also take the cost of paint when using high-pressure spray guns into consideration.
Airless Paint Sprayers
No one could deny the popularity of airless paint sprayers. Unfortunately, we hardly know that it wastes more paint than other spray gun products.
Numerically, the run-of-the-mill airless paint sprayer wastes around 40% of the paint, which is quite an astonishingly high number. What calls for special attention is that if you operate the machine in the wrong way, you will even cost more money in painting.
At each minute, on average, you will waste a few gallons of paint.
Why does this huge waste occur? It is mainly because the airless paint sprayers work so fast that users could overspray so many times. Though you could finish your job quickly, these sprayers seem not to be efficient on the paint spraying market.
If you have got yourself an airless paint sprayer, follow the instructions properly to limit the paint waste as much as possible. Or else, watch some Youtube tutorials for airless paint sprayers to save time and use them efficiently.
What Is The Best Surface To Use Paint Sprayers?
As mentioned above, using a paint sprayer poses a higher risk of over spraying. As a result, we highly recommend you apply them to outdoor projects or in unoccupied indoor spaces.
On the other hand, you also have to care about the weather. If it is a windy day, a sprayer seems not to be an efficient method for outside painting.
The paint masking should be thorough enough to apply well on the wall. Also, some strong wind could blow away a significant amount of paint while painting.
Rolling paint is impossible in rainy conditions; what about spraying? Honestly, spraying is also impractical too. The time needed for drying the paint of both rolling and spraying is nearly the same. Therefore, don’t try to spray when it is raining.
What If We Mix The Rolling And Spraying Method Together?
This idea is quite good because the result may be better than your expectation. Let’s take the rough wood siding as an example. You could speed up your work by spraying and brush the whole coverage with back-brushing.
This technique requires a helper. As paint gets dry so quickly, while one person is spraying, the other will immediately brush the paint with long strokes.
This method gives a clear benefit. As for spraying, you will finish your task much faster. The rolling will even out the coats and help the paint to adhere better to the surface.
Conclusion
Does spraying use more paint than rolling? One more time, the answer is yes. As with the clear and straight-to-the-point explanation above, we bet you have got a thorough understanding of this matter.
Choose a suitable sprayer to limit the paint waste. Sometimes, mixing rolling and spraying is also a great idea you could try.