There are fibers in my freshly painted wall

Question:

I just finished painting a wall (shouldn’t have done it—it was too dark) and now I see that there are roller fibers all over the wall. How can I cover them? Will another coat do the job or do I need to do something else first? This is dark red paint and it’s been hard to work with already, and now this. Any ideas?

Answer:

I’m sorry to hear about your trouble. Fibers in the paint are almost always due to cheap roller covers. Good quality products will always give you better results. Cheap roller covers will always leave hairs or fibers in the finished wall. If you must use subpar roller covers, you can wrap painter’s tape around the cover and then remove it. This will get rid of some of the loose fibers. You may have to do this several times. I suggest using Sherwin Williams brand Soft Woven roller covers. They never leave lint behind.

Another factor that exacerbated this problem is the color of the paint. Dark colors, reds especially, are notorious for showing imperfections. If you were working with a lighter color, you may not have even seen the hairs.

So, onto the solution. Unfortunately, there is no easy fix. Just doing another coat won’t fix the problem. In fact, if you do another coat with the same roller cover, it will probably make it worse. So you are going to have to let the walls set up for at least 48 hours; a week is better. If you skip this part, the paint is likely to peel when you sand it. Then sand the entire surface with 150 - 180 grit sandpaper. This will remove the hairs. Then you will have to repaint the walls with a good quality roller cover to finish up the paint job.

Thanks

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