Thinking it’s normal to repaint the house every couple of years?

[Cloudyyy]

Help solve a debate for us.

DH thinks once you’ve painted a room, it should be done! No touch-ups or fresh coats necessary. MIL agrees they’ve never needed to repaint unless otherwise redecorating, sometimes going 10+ years between paint jobs (and absolutely never more often than every five years).

I remember my parents always “touching up” with a fresh coat of paint every other spring, alternating doing upstairs and downstairs. DM used to sponge the walls sometimes with warm soapy water if we had scuffed it.

What is the norm???

YABU = we never repaint unless absolutely necessary
YANBU = we retouch the paint jobs from time to time

I should add we have young children, so messy/ sticky fingers on the walls are unavoidable at times!!!

Or those who wash towels after a single use?

@IrmaFayLear that just what I was thinking! The room in my house that must needs doing has floor to ceiling bookcases (full of books), a big desk, lots of artwork on the walls and other stuff that would need packing up and moving out of the way. Which is why it's not been decorated for twenty years!

Paint is toxic- wouldnt want my dcs breathing that so often

I use a brand that is eco friendly and avoids using ammonia and formaldehyde,

Every 2-3 years each room gets done. Kitchen especially looks mangy after 2 years

It would cost an absolute arm and a leg. We don't have the time, inclination or skills to do it ourselves. The fairly small amount of painting (a kitchen, hallway and half a living room plus some doors) we've done since we moved in has cost us £1500 and we have a large house. It would be thousands to repaint multiple rooms at once.

We're thinking of some new carpets this year at a cost of about £3-4k for 3 bedrooms, hall and study. We got a new engineered wooden floor in 2 rooms a few years ago and it was £3500. There's just no way we could be replacing flooring and painting and wallpapering every few years!

I'm not convinced by the idea that paint looks tired or crap after a year or two. We have F&B throughout the house which was put in by the previous occupants and it still looks fine.

I’ve lived her for six years. The kitchen, study and bathrooms have been fully painted three times since then, the bedrooms only once, everything else twice. I quite often touch up or paint one dirty wall rather than the whole room. I just do it when it looks dirty. I quite enjoy painting though so it’s no great hardship!

@MrsKoala what on earth are you doing in your house that within 3 months every room had chunks out of it??

@Abitofanexpert it doesn’t have to cost a fortune though. F&B isn’t the be all and end all, and isn’t even that great. Dulux Trade paint can be colour matched and is much cheaper and better. Most people on this thread are talking about doing the decorating themselves and paint for three rooms would be nowhere near £1500; not even £150.

this week we are getting the whole house painted (and some walls papered)

I'd love to understand the logistics of this. As Irma says, what do you do with all your stuff? It takes us an age to clear a room let alone doing the whole house at once.

Once every 3-4yrs is enough

Once we switched to paint from wallpaper, it's been painted a few times, mostly when my mother was sick of the colour. The other reason I would find to repaint would be change in paint - theses days they make awesome paint that can withstand kids and pets, and you need minimal effort to clean marks/spills. Back in the day it was a mammoth effort, and sometimes you'd have scrubbed so hard, you would have to repaint. Though I think it works out at a change every few years.

@gingersausage we haven't used F&B, the people before us did. We used Dulux Trade mixed to the colour we wanted. Even those materials would have cost far more than £150.

The time involved is unreal. Fair enough if you enjoy it and it's a hobby, but I definitely don't think it's normal or necessary.

YABU I can't vite in polls as MN has taken it away with their mad IT "skillz"

Repainting every two years is insanely wasteful and expensive.

There is a never ending circle of decorating in our house. I'm with you, refresh every couple of years.

Only when absolutely necessary!

Ooh I’m clearly a bit skanky.
Our extension was built over 10 years ago and the only rooms to have a repaint is the en suite, the downstairs loo and the utility room. I think the bedroom and games room look ok.
Existing house bedrooms have been done 3 times in 20 years. Main bath in old part of house once in 20 years.
To be fair the living room and dining room are desperately needing done (and have done so for the last 5 years or so) but it’s the thought of emptying book cases, TV units and cabinets etc and haul them away from the walls puts me off.
We have a 10yo and a 3 yo. Thinking I might do the prep, go on holidays for a week and leave a decorator to do it.
We keep putting it off cos the staircase needs replaced (it’s in the living room and very 80’s) and we keep saying we’ll do that then decorate. Since that’s never gonna happen we might as well do the walls.

I used to love decorating but now we have kids it fills me with dread. Two adults can live with papering tables, paint pots and ladders left out. Definitely not feasible with a toddler.

Even eco paint is still toxic.

If decorating is your idea of a good time, why not - but pretending it's necessary is not true, just keep the house clean. Good old soap and water are enough for most areas.
Pretending yearly decorating is harmless for the occupants, especially young children is naive at best. Of course it's not.

This thread has made me get in to action, i painted our living room a year ago, looked lovely. My son then smashed his toy car in to the wall and chipped some of the paper. It’s been bugging me for AGES. Today I’m paining over it. No one will notice the touch ups except you, because you look at it all day! Visitors don’t see that stuff.

Of course paint isn’t toxic. You don’t see painters and decorators dropping like flies do you?

Just repainted after 8 years. It better bloody last another 8 years before it needs redoing again.

I think it's like the washing towels threads where I am sure people who do this regularly don't have to hold down a full time job because it's so time consuming.

Well paint is toxic but the amount I’m using to cover the mark is about the same amount of fumes as painting your nails.

My parents insist on repainting every room every two years at most. The walls aren't even dirty (and weren't when we were kids, we'd have been told off for touching them!) and they don't even change the colour unless fully redecorating (every 4 - 5 years).

My main memories of weekends and school holidays as a child are of having to keep out of the way while my dad (a teacher, so also off school) was up a ladder with a paintbrush. They were obsessed with decorating at the expense of ever spending time with us, which I find sad.

My ex PIL, on the other hand, had never repainted or decorated a room in 30 years. They then wondered why no one wanted to buy their house. There's a happy medium there somewhere!

gingersausage
Of course paint isn’t toxic. You don’t see painters and decorators dropping like flies do you?

Actually, if you bother reading researches about it, here's one
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854755/

An increased incidence and mortality from lung cancer has been observed in painters, an occupation that employs several million people worldwide (IARC 1989)

I find it interesting that a PP mentioned frequent decorating being a lower-middle class thing. The most frequent decorators I know are unemployed single mums. The ones who aren't allowed to decorate rental properties (most are if they keep it cream) are replacing soft furnishings, pictures etc yearly if not more. One mum I know is always asking on FB for cheap sofas to 'update' her house.

The reverse of that is my very very upper class friends who's parents haven't decorated in 30+ years. One such set of parents have broken stained sofas despite easily being able to afford new ones.

I've been in my house for 10 years. Some rooms have been decorated once. Some not at all. Some really need it but I can't afford it so it doesn't get done.

My ILs house is falling apart at the seams. They are not rich or of high socioeconomic class. They are immigrants and the house looks very nice outside, the front garden is beautiful in summer.

The inside is full of mould, wallpaper peeling, the kitchen smells because of leaks and if you pull a drawer out it often falls apart in your hand. They just will not spend the money on replacing anything.

I know a very upper class family, they live in chelsea. They redo the house every 2 years. The wife was building a pergola by herself for the small garden (I don’t think she finished it of course!) I think it’s just people’s tastes, not their money. Some like classic, some like fashion, some like not spending anything and making do, some like me - just wish the kids would stop jumping on my sofa, running their dirty little hands along my walls and hitting the skirting board when they take their shoes off in the hall!

I wipe walls down often, paint maybe every 5 years or so.

You must come from a very wealthy family!! I don't know anyone that could AFFORD to repaint their house every 2 years. From what I understand, with most people it's 10-15 years. A few rooms in our house haven't been repainted for 20-odd years, including bedroom. And they still look as if they were painted last week. I don't know what you're doing to your walls to need to wash and repaint so much. I guess if you have the money, go for it, but it seems batshit crazy to me and a complete waste of money. I'd recommend wallpaper if your home gets that dirty, but if your walls are continually getting that dirty and roughed up, you'll rip the wallpaper anyway. Oh, got wallpaper on one wall that has been here since we moved in, in 1988. I can see 2 very small scuffs. Other than that, it's in great condition.