Can anyone tell me what has happened to my newly (professionally) painted walls?

[Sandcaaarstle]

Just had my lounge painted. It was silk emulsion and I didn’t fancy panting it myself with Matt emulsion. I’ve come home from work today (it was finished yesterday afternoon) and looks like this. What do I do now?
I’ve attached photos but might not upload for a while.

Was the wall damp at all. Something similar happened on my bathroom wall but only on the bits where I’d put filler and I assumed it hadn’t dried properly

You have to rub down the silk emulsion before using matt.

We had this in our old house, old walls no new plaster and it turned out to fault in the paint. Showed pictures to b&q and got our money back (we painted it ourselves tho)

Coat two has been down before coat one has fully cured.

Looks like the mist coat has been missed!

This thread omg I had no idea there were all these rules for painting to go well 😵 I just did my bathroom and kids rooms, first ever time painting and thankfully it's went well but omg I absolutely could have done this without knowing 😅 thank you all for the information!

Genuine question; if you despise vinyl silk that much, why did you choose to decorate with it? I didn't think anyone still used it.

Wallpaper paste needs to be really really well scrubbed off the walls and then the walls sealed before paining. I had this problem when we moved into our house.

You can’t paint Matt over silk without a primer I don’t think.?

That's the consequence of panting Matt over silk. It doesn't stick. They should have primed all the walls first so it'll all have to be sanded back and re done

How do you get away with that? I’ve never met a tradie that didn’t expect you to pay upon completion. What do you say?

This happened to me years ago . Painted Matt over silk and when dry it “crazed” like this. Had to sand all walls down and repaint. It was fine after that but felt like nightmare at the time

We had this happen and it was because we didn’t get all the wallpaper paste off the wall. So we had to sand it down and start again.

If I was paying a professional I’d expect them to know this

I would say the paint was too thick, or a second coat applied when the first wasn’t dry , I’ve done this before x

When we bought our house the sitting room was turquoise eggshell (walls and ceiling). The whole house was different shades of turquoise actually. Paint and wallpaper. Even the Aga ( the only bit left) was turquoise. And I learnt later that the lady who had owned it (she had died 5 years earlier and we bought when her husband moved into a home) had owned a turquoise car too. We didn’t have the money for a painter at the time, so we did it our selves. From what I remember, the eggshell needed several layers of undercoat.

I haven’t. The previous owners used vinyl silk. My decorator has used matt.

The whole house, every single wall and ceiling is silk emulsion. Not turquoise, although the colour underneath the one wall that was wallpapered was!

I wondered this. But I’ve done that loads of times (second coat too soon) and it’s never ever done that. It can’t be wallpaper paste either, as only one wall was papered.

it must be the silk emulsion 🫠

If they painted over silk with mat, then it's not adhered. They should've used something like zinisser primer on it but it's expensive.

oh, someone else has said exactly the same, lol.

The satin paint underneath is more flexible. It has glue in it which expands. Matt paint is less flexible. The moisture from the new Matt paint has caused the old satin paint to move around and as the Matt paint has dried it has cracked as it’s not as flexible as the underlayer

Im guessing the sanding wasnt as comprehensive as it should have been.

It’s not new plaster. The house is 5 years old. I think as others have said, it’s either panting matt on top of silk, or it wasn’t properly dry in between coats.

thank you, this makes sense and I think is exactly what happened. Decorators definitely sanded all the walls down first, I heard them doing it for ages.

I feel for you. You will get there in the end. It will be worth it. I thought of our gargantuan redecoration task as giving the house back its dignity.

Can I suggest if you do any other rooms you
do them in the spring when the temp is mild outside and don’t put the heating on
Definitely don’t try to speed up the drying process
plus
completely sand back the walls and give them time for any moisture to dissipate…naturally.