Why does interior paint crack

Find out how to prioritize your rooms for painting. Paint one or all of these four areas to instantly spiff up your home. What feeling do you want to create in your space? The right paint can create the right mood for your bedroom. Can you repaint your business while staying open and providing your customers with what they need? Follow these steps. Chuck Winkles August 14, Share This Post. Share on facebook. Share on linkedin. Share on twitter. Share on email.

More To Explore. Identifying cracking paint in the early stages is simple if you know what to look for, such as the image below. These are early-stage hairline cracks — a sign of problems to come. But in the later stages, as you can see towards the bottom of the image above, the paint begins to separate and crack apart, making the problem more serious and harder to fix.

The sooner you notice the signs of paint cracking or flaking and bring in a professional , the quicker and easier it will be to fix it. Your business needs an up-to-date paint job to maintain a clean, professional image, especially if you rely on foot traffic for customers.

But besides being a visually unappealing, cracking, flaking paint can sometimes be dangerous or an indicator of something more serious happening inside your walls. Make sure your walls are tested for lead before taking on any big renovations. Paint cracking on walls, ceilings, and exterior surfaces happens due to a variety of causes, one of the most common being poor preparation of a surface prior to painting.

Painting over cracked paint is a bad idea; it is important to remove any flakes from the surface before repainting. Poor surface preparation, especially when the paint is applied to bare wood without priming, or to previously coated surfaces that show signs of cracking or flaking paint.

Spreading paint too thin during application. Paint becoming brittle with age, failing to expand and contract with temperature and humidity changes. Note: A more uncommon version of paint cracking is mud cracking, which is when paint cracks when drying due to too-thick application or extremely dry painting conditions.

If cracking does not go down to the substrate: Remove the loose or flaking paint with a scraper or wire brush, sand the area to feather the edges, prime any bare spots, and repaint the surface.

If cracking goes down to the substrate: Remove as much of the existing paint as possible.