Painting interior door with wood grain

[bigbluesea]

Any tips on how to paint it so that the finish is smooth? YouTube tells me that I need wood filler, which sounds pretty much like Polyfilla - can I use that? Or is some kind of primer better? And can I use normal paint on it?

Many thanks in advance!

Is it solid wood & the wood is rough? Or do You mean you want to hide the wood grain and have a completely smooth door?
Wood filler & polyfilla wood both need smoothing/ sanding tbh but you would be better sticking to wood filler.
It would be best using an interior wood paint for the final finish though.
I’ve just painted 6 new interior doors with dulux once satinwood. It was a lie, it took 3 thin coats. If it was applied thickly enough that only one coat was needed then it dripped and ran.
A couple of the doors were existing doors, they had a thick layer of gloss already on, can’t see any wood grain on those but they still needed 3 coats to cover up the old cream paint.

Yes, I'd like to hide the wood grain! OK, was hoping I could get away with Polyfilla but wood filler it is! Will have a look for interior paint too. Thank you!

I think it would be an awful lot of hard work to hide the wood grain, would it not be better to replace the doors if you want them totally smooth?

www.diy.com/departments/flush-primed-white-lh-rh-internal-door-h-2040mm-w-826mm/175466_BQ.prd?rrec=true

Really? Bah! Was hoping for a quick and easy fix. Will likely end up replacing the doors but I'm not really comfortable having strangers in my house at the moment and will have to get someone to install them. Thanks for your help though!

I'm finding it hard to imagine it's grainy enough that you can't just give it a good sand, prime and paint. If it's wood you should be able to sand it smooth. Wood filler is a great product for filling any holes or dents.

*however you use it like polyfilla on imperfections, you don't skim a whole door with it..

If you don't think you can just sand it maybe post a photo so we can undery the issue a bit more

Do you mean you have a white moulded panel door with an imprinted "wood grain" effect in it? I can't find a photo of a close up but they are usually found in houses built around 2000. I have them. Far easier to paint actually because you don't need perfect brush strokes.

And having just repainted 2 this week the answer is no, you will definitely need a new door. It will be impossible to fill and sand.

This is what I mean but you cannot see the "grain" on the photo but it is not smooth. this

Sadly door hanging is hit and miss in terms of time spent so chippies usually charge on a day rate rather than by door. I had 2 new doors when I had an extension built.

Pic here! Oo, can I just sand it down...?

There are no panels on the door!

Struggling to see the detail, is it an MDF door rather than actual wood?
If so, I don’t think you will be able to sand the detail off, you will end up taking the top coating off & exposing the pulpy bits of wood that have been pressed together.

Agreed, only sand if it's proper wood and it's not obviously that from the pic. A lot of doors aren't.

It doesn't look all that pronounced so unless I'm missing something I would paint it, maybe lightly sand between coats, and by the time you've got a primer plus 2-3 coats of satinwood I would expect you wouldn"t notice the grain. Find some satinwood or eggshell paint and it'll tell you on the tin what undercoats (or not) you need.

Ah, OK great. I'll give a whirl and hope for the best. Thanks!

It looks to me like a wood veneer, which you can sand lightly and prime.

It is presumably varnished, so I think you will need an oil based primer.

There are also doors with what's called a wood grain finish, which is pressed into the surface and is a deep texture, intended to be painted. Usually seen on hardboard doors. I don't think that's what you've got.

There is also a technique called "graining" where different paints are applied to softwood doors with special brushes to give the appearance of polished hardwood. There are very fine examples in the National Gallery. It is not usually very convincing. I don't think you mean that either.