Properly clean your paint brushes after painting job not only save quite a lot money spending on buying new paint brushes in the long term but also much smooth and easy your next painting jobs.
By adhering to these detailed steps and tips, you can guarantee that your paint brushes remain in a good condition in longer time and are ready for your next painting project as well.
Immediate Cleaning Paint Brushes after Use
It’s best practice to clean paint brushes as soon as you finish painting.
- For brushes used with water-based paint, stir the bristles in a clean cutting bucket filled with water. Rub the bristles against the bucket’s bottom or side several times. Repeat this process until most of the paint build-up is removed. You can hand rub bristles and try to remove the extra paint or flakes inside bristles when necessary.
- In the case of oil-based paint, pour approximately 20mm to 40mm of mineral turpentine into a clean cutting bucket. Press the bristles against the bucket bottom and side repeatedly to scrub off the remaining paint.
Removing Dried Paint Residue from Paint Brushes
After the initial cleaning, use a brush comb (or wire brush) to thoroughly comb out excess paint from the bristles. It do need to be very kind when using wire brush to clean the bristles, rather then damage them.
Generally, there is still some dried paint sticking to the surface of bristles and ferrule, which can be scraped off by scrub pad or multi-function scraper or a stiff scraper. Be careful to scrape off the paint debris without causing significant damage to the bristles, especially using the multi-function scraper or steel scraper. While multi-function scraper is one of the most useful tool to painter.
Drying and Storing the Paint Brushes
Once the brushes are clean, proper drying is crucial. Shake off the water and allow the paint brushes to air-dry completely before reusing or storing them. This helps prevent bacteria growth caused by moisture, and the damp will damage the wooden handle.
Additional Tips to Help to Clean Paint Brushes
- Once you select your brush (or roller), wash it before painting. This is a vital step. As the water makes brush easier to load paint, provides better coverage upon application, and results in a much smoother finish. Soak your brush in a cutting bucket filled with water for 10 minutes. Ensure you do shake off excess moisture quite well. This can avoid residual water in the bristles dilute the paint on the brush, and run down the handle and floor everywhere when painting.
- Before you start, it’s better to use painter’s tape to protect brush handle, metal ferrule and the base part of bristles. The tape can protect bristles, ferrule and handle pretty much well in painting. And also make the job to clean brush to be much easier after painting job done.
- When you’re waiting to apply your second or third coat, the paint on brush can dry out very quickly when just exposed in air. So when finished the first coat painting, it’s better to keep brush inside the cutting bucket always and cover the bucket with one wet cleaning cloth (or drop sheet) and place them in a damp corner. This can perfect protect the paint to dry and stuck on your brush bristles.
- When you’re ready to paint the second coat, give the paint another stir in case any colour separation has occurred.
- Haven’t finished painting today, and need to continue tomorrow: in order to save time on washing them out, wrap the brush with a small piece of plastic bag and keep them in a damp area. This will keep the paint in brush (and roller) to be fresh for one night.
- When cleaning brushes used with water-based paint, if water (or even warm water) alone cannot well clean them, you can use some mineral turpentine to dissolve the dried paint flakes and then thoroughly rinse with warm water and soap to remove all traces of turpentine.
- Keep water-based and oil-based brushes separate to avoid cross-contamination. You can label and separate them by taping the brush handles and marking them as “oil based” or “water based”.
- The best way to keep brush is to hang the brushes to ensure the bristles maintain their good shape. Or you can lay the dried brush on one level surface, like storage shelf. While many painter keep their brushes inside a bucket with bristle up and handle down.
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