Prepare your home for the holidays with some quick painting. With the holidays right around the corner, you’ve probably got a million things to see too. If you need to do a few paint touchups throughout your home to get it ready to ring in the season, Franklin Painting of Farmington, CT, has some helpful tips.

What really needs touching up?

You don’t want to get caught up in a full-blown painting project during the busy holiday season, so look around your house and see what really needs some sprucing up.

Entry doors, staircase banisters, cabinet doors, parts of walls, painted decks and other high-traffic or often-used areas likely will stand out.
Make a list of what you want to touch up.

Would cleaning do the trick?

You may notice some dirty areas around light switches, cabinet handles and door knobs. These areas could probably be transformed by simply cleaning them with a solution that will not harm the paint while removing the grease and grime.

Often, a good soapy rub-down is enough to brighten up parts of rooms or entire rooms – or the entire house. See how far you can get with cleaning before you break out the paint.

When it’s time for quick painting touch-ups

Here are a few things to keep in mind and make the work a lot easier and more productive.

Get the right paint

If you don’t have leftover paint and do not remember the name of the paint you’ll be covering, use one of the many color-matching apps to determine the correct color code. If applicable, you can cut a small chunk out of the areas you’ll be painting and bring it to a paint store for matching. (You can replace the chunk and sand and spackle before painting.)

Prep, prep, prep

Any professional painter will tell you that painting is way more about prepping than actual painting. Proper prep involves:

Cleaning the surfaces so that paint will adhere
Filling in holes so the finished job looks nice
Sanding the surfaces so paint goes on easy

The painting equipment

Even small holiday touch-up painting requires that you have the necessary tools and equipment. Things you will likely need include:

Good paint – not the cheap stuff
Quality brushes in various sizes
Quality rollers (if you’ll be doing walls)
Drop cloths to protect furniture, carpet and flooring
Smaller paint buckets (so you don’t have to paint out of a large can)
Putty knife, spackle, painter’s tape, sandpaper and tools to remove fixtures
Plenty of paper and fabric cleaning towels
A quality primer if you will be changing the color and painting light over dark

Avoiding hazards

This tip is pretty much common sense, but it is something people sometimes forget: safeguard the painted areas after you paint them.

Playful dogs and cats have been known to pick up some new color on their coats by rubbing against freshly painted surfaces. Now you have to re-paint the parts that were messed up and get the paint off your pet.

The same with curious toddlers. Figure out a way to keep them away from wet paint, because wet paint will attract them like a magnet.