How to Paint a Room and Hide Dark Paint

Painting a Room using Benjamin Moore’s Aura Interior Paint

By Mark J. Donovan




My wife and I recently painted a room that had dark paint on the lower half of the walls. The walls were divided by a wallpaper border. The lower half of the walls was a dark red, and the upper half of the walls was a light beige color. Hiding dark paint can normally be a challenge if you intend to paint the walls a much lighter color, which was the situation in our case. Often you find yourself priming the walls first with a light primer and then applying two coats of paint over it.

We decided however on this project to skip the primer stage and go directly to the paint stage solely using Benjamin Moore’s Aura interior paint. This particular type of paint is very expensive.

However its high cost is mitigated by the fact that you don’t have to buy paint primer nor do you have to spend time applying it to the walls.

To paint the room we first removed all the wall hangings from the room, as well as some of the furniture. We then removed all the nails and patched the walls with spackling, and then lightly sanded over the patches. In addition, we removed all the electrical outlet and switch covers.

Next, we removed the wallpaper border. This took a few days, working only an hour or so each day. Removing the wall paper border involved wetting it down with a water spray bottle and then peeling it off with a 3 inch wide drywall taping knife.

After removing the wallpaper border and applying masking tape around the doors, windows, and baseboard trim, we began the actual task of painting the room. Per the directions from the sales person who sold us the Benjamin Moore Aura paint, we first did our cutting along the trim and wall / ceiling edges.

According to the sales person, only one coat of cutting is required with this type of paint. He was basically correct, however we chose to apply one more coat of cutting along the four corners of the room on the lower half of the walls where the dark paint was.

After completing the cutting we used a 9 inch roller with a very thin, 3/16 inch thick, nap to paint the room walls. Unlike other types of paint, Benjamin Moore’s Aura interior paint dries very quickly. Consequently we rolled the paint onto the walls in pretty much an up and down motion, versus using the standard W or M motion. We also moved quickly to make sure we did not go over the same painted area too many times with the roller. Somewhat to our surprise one coat of paint did a very effective job of hiding the dark paint on the lower half of the walls.

After applying the first coat of paint to the room, we let it dry for one hour before applying the second coat.

How to paint a room to hide old dark paint.

As already mentioned, we only applied a second coat of cutting in the 4 vertical corners of the room to ensure that we fully and evenly masked out the old dark paint on the bottom half of the walls.

After letting the second coat of paint dry for an hour we removed the masking tape, reattached the electrical cover plates, re-mounted the wall hangings and moved the furniture back into the room.
Without a doubt, painting a room using Benjamin Moore’s Aura interior paint was an excellent decision. The room turned out great and we saved a lot of time. In one day we had completely painted the room and returned it back to its finished look.


See the Installing Interior Window Ebook from HomeAdditionPlus.com. The Installing Interior Window Trim Ebook provides easy to understand, step-by-step instructions, on how to install interior window trim around a window. Pictures are included for every key step in the process.

Related Information


Additional House Painting and Staining Resources from Amazon.com


Painting and Staining Price Quotes For FREE, No Obligation!

Fill out our 3-5 minute quick and easy form, and receive a free price quote on painting & staining from one of our pre-screened and licensed painting & staining contractors. This process is free and there is no obligation to continue once you receive your painting price estimate.