What is painting walls with emulsion?
Painting walls with emulsion (in Dutch sauzen) means applying wall paint to walls and ceilings, usually with a roller and a brush for the edges. In the past, the “sauce” consisted of lime or chalk with glue and water; today you almost always use a wall paint based on a synthetic dispersion (popularly called latex, in Britain emulsion) or a mineral system such as lime or silicate paint. Dutch painters say sausen; both spellings are used.
Step by step
- Clear and cover the room: cover the floor with a protective runner, mask window frames and skirting boards with painter’s tape.
- Check the substrate: clean, dry, grease-free and sound. Fill holes and cracks and sand smooth once dry. Rub your hand over an old paint film: if it chalks (white fingers), apply a stabilising primer first.
- Prime: treat new plaster, plasterboard and highly absorbent surfaces first with a primer or a thinned first coat, following the paint manufacturer’s advice.
- Edges first: use a brush to paint the corners and the junctions with the ceiling, window frames and skirting boards.
- Roll: load the roller well and roll it out on the grid. Work in strips about a metre wide, first spreading vertically and then laying off in one direction.
- Work wet into wet: start the next strip while the previous one is still wet. Stopping in the middle of a wall leaves visible lap marks.
- Second coat: after the drying time stated on the tin.
Tips for a streak-free result
- Work one wall at a time and only stop at a corner.
- Lay off the ceiling parallel to the light, that is, towards the window. That way the strips show least.
- Avoid draughts and strong sunlight while working: drying too quickly causes streaks.
- Choose the sheen deliberately: matt hides imperfections, satin is more washable but shows every irregularity.
- Work out quantities from the coverage on the tin (square metres per litre per coat) and buy enough from one production batch so that the colour stays consistent.
Related terms
- Types of wall paint
- Plasterboard
- Latex cement
- Slaked lime
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