What you need before decorating a room

Work out how much paint the room needs

Paint is sold by volume and used by area, and the gap between those two is where a second trip to the shop comes from. It is worth five minutes with a tape measure before anything is bought.

• The wall area: each wall’s width times its height, with large windows and doors taken off.
• The ceiling, measured separately — and a decision about whether it is being done at all.
• The woodwork, counted as lengths rather than area: skirting, architrave, door and sill.
• How many coats, which depends on what is underneath. Bare plaster, a dark colour and a patched wall all take more.
• The coverage the tin itself states for the surface you have, rather than a general rule of thumb.
• Whether you have seen the colour on this wall, in this light, at the time of day you use the room.

Buy the wall paint for one room in a single batch wherever possible. Mixed colours are matched per batch, and two tins bought weeks apart are not guaranteed to be identical — which only becomes visible as an edge once the second tin is open.

Preparation is more of the list than paint

Filler, sandpaper, masking tape and dust sheets are not accessories to the paint. They are what decides whether the room looks decorated or merely painted, and they are the easiest lines to leave off a list for being unexciting.

Filler and sandpaper

Every hole and scuff is still there under the new colour, and more obvious for sitting under a clean surface.

Primer

Bare, patched or previously glossy surfaces need something for the paint to hold on to. Worth confirming for the surface you actually have rather than buying by default.

Masking tape and dust sheets

Bulky, easy to overlook, and they decide how much of the day is painting rather than cleaning.

Brushes, rollers and a tray

The group to check the cupboard for first, before a second set goes on the list.

The order that avoids doing anything twice

Decorating has a conventional order, and it exists because each stage makes a mess of the one before it.

• Prepare

  Clear the room, cover what stays, fill, sand and clean down. The longest part, and the one least worth rushing.

• Paint

  Ceiling, then walls, then woodwork — so anything that drops lands on a surface that is not finished yet.

• Finish

  Pull the tape, touch up, and put the room back. Wallpaper, if any, goes on finished walls and is its own separate job.

Drying time between coats is the real schedule. The painting is not what decides how long the room takes; the waiting between coats is.

What to borrow, and what can wait

Borrow or hire

Steps, a steamer, a long roller pole, a pasting table. All used for a day and then stored for years.

Already in the cupboard

Brushes, a tray, tape and sheets from the last room. Check the cupboard before any of it goes on the list a second time.

Worth buying properly

The paint, and a roller that does not shed. Those two are what the finish depends on.

Wallpaper, if at all

The template marks it optional because it is a separate decision with its own quantity problem: pattern repeat and drop length, not wall area.

Open it as a plan

Everything above works on paper. If you would rather keep it on your phone — with each line carrying its own price, priority, notes, deadline and a link to the thing you found — the iPhone app ships a Decorating template that starts you with a 8-item checklist instead of an empty project.

1. 1Add a project
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   In the app, tap the + control in the centre of the tab bar. Its accessibility label is “Add a project”.

2. 2Start from a template
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   The “New project” sheet opens. Use the “Start from a template” row rather than typing a name into an empty project.

3. 3Pick Decorating
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   Choose the “Decorating” chip. The sheet says how many starter items it will add and pre-fills the project name, which you can edit here.

4. 4Create project
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   Tap “Create project”. The project opens with its checklist already written, and every line is yours to rename, delete or re-prioritise.

Decorating is the chip in the template picker. The project name arrives pre-filled as Decorating a room, and that part is yours to change before or after you create the project.

What the Decorating template starts you with

These are suggestions. Only the paint and the filler genuinely repeat from room to room; the rest is equipment that can come back out of the cupboard.

• PaintUrgent
• Primer
• Brushes & rollers
• Masking tape
• Dust sheets
• Filler & sandpaper
• Roller tray
• Wallpaper (optional)