Hooray, you’ve decided to take the DIY painting challenge! You’ve picked the right color for your home as well. Now, what’s next? You can’t just go to the depot and buy paint without estimating how much product you’ll need.

“Off the top of my head, I think I need 10 liters of paint.” That’s not how we roll! You’ll either buy too little or too much. If you buy too little, the paint color won’t be consistent for the whole area you’re working on. On the other hand, if you buy too much, you’ll have excess paint. Contrary to what you may have heard, paints do expire, especially leftover water-based paints. That’s why it’s important to make sure that once you’ve opened a can you’ll use it all.

Buy only the paint you’ll need and minimize waste. Here, we will help you calculate how much paint you’ll need for your DIY painting project. Read on.

Calculate the total paintable area.

Prepare a metal tape measure (or what painters call metro), a scratch paper, and a pen. Measure the height and width of the wall. Double-check your measurements and jot them down.

 

Boysen Tutorials: How Much Paint Do I Need? | MyBoysen
Boysen Tutorials: How Much Paint Do I Need? | Let it B | www.myboysen.com

To calculate the area of a wall, we multiply the height and width of it. If you are painting more than one wall, just add the total areas together. Then, subtract the surface areas of the doors, windows, and fixtures from the total. The difference is the total paintable area.

Use the Boysen Paint Calculator.

Boysen Tutorials: How Much Paint Do I Need? | MyBoysen

Now that you have the total paintable area in square meters, you just have to input it in the Boysen Paint Calculator. In just a few clicks, it will list the painting system and the amount of products you’ll need in liters. You can access the Boysen Paint Calculator by clicking this link. You may also download the Boysen app from the App Store or Play Store. Open it and look for the Paint Calculator.

Find out the reason why paint experts prefer this method when you’re estimating how much paint you’ll need. Read this post:

Paint Calculator: Estimate the Coverage and Amount of Paint You Would Need

Do the math!

Caution: More math.

We highly recommend that you use the Boysen Paint Calculator because it’s fast and easy. If you want to manually compute the amount of paint you’ll need, you may do so. Here’s the formula:

Boysen Tutorials: How Much Paint Do I Need? | MyBoysen
Boysen Tutorials: How Much Paint Do I Need? | Let it B | www.myboysen.com

In this example, the wall measures 5-meter-high x 12-meter-wide, so the total paintable area is 60 square meters. We want to use Boysen Healthy Home, which can cover 30-35 sq. m. per coat depending on surface texture and porosity. To know the specific paint product coverage, go to the Boysen website, and read the product information.

We divide the paintable area by the paint product coverage, then multiply the quotient by the number of coats. Finally, we convert the gallons to liters, so we’ll know what Boysen paint packaging size to get—they usually come in 1-liter, 4-liter, and 16-liter cans. In this case, the DIYer needs four cans of a 4-liter Boysen Healthy Home.

If you want a Boysen paint expert to check your calculations, call our technical team at (02) 8363-9738 local 417 to 418 during office hours or write an email to ask@myboysen.com.

 

 

Author

Yasmin Aguila is a copywriter at Boysen Paints Philippines. Interested in making paints fun and relatable, she produces quizzes and painting ideas for this blog. She claims that she is obsessed with yellow, but she always dresses in black from head to toe.

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