Tools of the Trade #1: Advice on Selecting the Right Paintbrush from Washington DC and Northern Virginia Painting Contractor
You’ve cleaned, sanded, and primed the trim around your living room windows, selected a high-quality acrylic latex paint, and are ready to get started. There is only a little bit of area to cover, so you’ve calculated that a quart of topcoat will be sufficient to get the job done. One thick layer over the entire surface. But to your dismay, as the paint starts to dry on the areas you have already painted, you can see streaks in the paint where the brush strokes interrupted the even surface, allowing the undercoat to show through. You’re going to need another coat, which means you are going to need to do another round trip to the paint store. Frustrated, you return to your paint can to read the label. “Self-priming, one-coat performance”, it boasts. And its reputation claims it lives up to that boast (justifying the $30/quart that you payed for it). You did all your prep work right, and you even primed, though your superpaint claims you didn’t have to. So what went wrong?
The culprit in your disappointing coverage might be the often overlooked hero of a paint job: the paintbrush. Exploring a paint store, you will notice a wide range in cost between high-end and rail paintbrushes. In fact, in many stores you’ll find the top-shelf brushes stashed behind locked glass displays, like power tools or DVDs. Such a fuss over paintbrushes seems over the top, but a high-quality paintbrush can make a world of difference in your paint job, and an extra $10 to buy a good one can save you $30 in extra paint – plus the time it takes to paint an extra coat.
So how do you tell the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to paint brushes? Just leave it to the price tag? Not necessarily, although you will find general improvement in the brushes as the prices go up. The features of a good paint brush are as follows:
Material. It is important that the material your brush is made of is a good match for your paint. Brushes can be natural or synthetic, and there are many varieties of each. Synthetic brushes can be made of nylon, polyester, or nylon-polyester blend. For latex paint, a nylon-polyester blend is most suitable. Pure nylon will become limp after a few hours painting, and pure polyester is harder to clean and loses bristles more easily. Natural brushes are usually made out of china bristle: the hair of a Chinese long-haired swine. China bristle brushes are ideal for work with alkyd paints; though they do not last as long as synthetic paints, their bristles hold the oil paints better and allow for more even transmission.
Tuft Density. A good way to test for a high quality brush is to brush your hand with it a few times, feeling the bristles. Cheaper paintbrushes tend to be thinner, more uneven, and less orderly. A paintbrush that is going to spread the paint evenly across your surface without leaving streaks will feel soft, thick, and even across your hand, with no errant flyaway bristles.
Durability. The best way to ruin a good paintbrush is not to take care of it properly. Every painter has times when she leaves the brush sitting in a can of paint and goes out to lunch, where she leaves a little bit too much time between finishing painting and cleaning it off, or where she tosses it into the toolbox without proper care and storage. All of these habits will take months off the life of your paintbrush, and will make the quality of your paint jobs start to deteriorate. That said, the lower quality the paintbrush, the less forgiving it will be of the normal wear and tear that comes with its role in life. A good brush should have bristles anchored firmly in the ferrule, not pulling away, and the bristles should lay straight. It should easily keep its shape when subjected to light pressure, and should be made of the appropriate material to chemically resist the type of paint you intend to use.
So when you’re picking out a new brush, look past the price tag and really get a feel for the brush: and then take careful not of how it performs over time. And if you’re using a brush that you have used again and again, consider the way you’ve been treating it. And look to the quality of your paint jobs to give you hints about whether your paintbrush is performing up to speed.