Painting high gloss walls

[hedgehoggle]

Finally stripped the hideous wallpaper off the bathroom walls to reveal the homeowner's original choice was... pink high gloss! It's very odd! Does anyone have experience of painting high gloss walls?

Do I need to sand at all?

Or can I go straight in?

Water based paint (emulsion) over oil based (gloss) won't stick properly without some prep.
You will definitely need to sand down the gloss a bit. I'd also probably go for a primer like Zinsser, but some emulsions do have a primer built in.

Well you are actually pretty lucky because your walls should be in tip top shape if they are covered in gloss. You won't have much prep work to do aside sanding off the shine. Do use a quality primer before decorative finish.

If it's gloss paint straight onto plaster, you may be able to strip it off, the start again with non gloss paint (mist coat first). I'm surprised it didn't peel off when you removed the wallpaper. Are there more layers?

@wippandzipp would you say it's worth stripping? Will it make much of a difference?

Oh God I hope there's not more layers! We've also got a cabinet in there with no IDEA how it's attached the walls - no screws or any clear fixings. It's one of those "bodge it" sort of houses from the past

My house was one room pink, one room blue etc - the old lady had worked in a hardware store and it was leftovers. Luckily only the green room had gloss paint, I sanded it with a sander and applied a primer, took about 5 coats on the ceiling (yup gloss ceilings too!)

@Ariela oh my god, you've beaten me there!! GLOSS CEILINGS? What was going on!

At least the bathroom is a very small room and half is tiled. So there's not much painting to do. Although the ceiling has that annoyed raised swirl pattern

@hedgehoggle it was presumably the reduced to clear paint from the place she worked. So gloss was fine if it was free!