why has my newly painted wall got lots of cracks in the paint?

Question

i have just painted a wall,indoors, and when i woke up this morning it has thousands of tiny cracks in the paint which look like little white worms, why? and if i give it more coats will it sort itself out?

Answer 1

Another possible answer to the cracking is that you were using old paint.

Paints, like food, have a shelf-life of only so long before they become worthless.

Also, if the paint had frozen at any time, it is worthless.

My advice to you would be to purchase a good quality primer and paint the wall with that first.

You should be able to prime right over everything and it should fill in all the cracks and prep the wall for the finish coat(s).

Also, remember to stir up any old paint really good.

If you get new paint, the store should shake it up for you, even if you don't get a custom color.

Answer 2

Fresh Paint Cracking On Walls

Answer 3

Im an apprentice painter and decorator.



The cracks could be quite a few things to be honest. The most common is that the wall had a substance on it that the paint couldnt adhere to (Couldnt get on with well basically). The most likely forms of these are grease (Normally found in the kitchen) or wallpaper paste left over from past wallpaper that has been re-woken by the paint. To be honest theres not a great deal that you can do to fix this. Your options are sand the entire walldown and hopefully your pull any crap off it, or wallpaper the wall and re-paint it

Answer 4

You haven't given enough information to diagnose the problem. What kind of wall? What kind of paint? Did the wall have any problems before you painted it? More coats will not sort this out. All you'll get is the same thing again since paint doesn't fill cracks, however small they are. If you did more than one coat, the first coat might not have been dry enough to re-coat.

Answer 5

This is called "mud cracking". There are a few reasons that this occurs. Whenever it happens - it happens with a flat waterbased paint.



Recoating too soon, painting a dead flat over a glossier paint, painting over wallpaper glue, painting over a waterbased primer too soon, or putting on too thick of a coat of paint are some of the reasons for mud cracking.



The real solution here is not going to please you, but you need to seal off the previous paint with a solvent type of primer (oil or pigmented shellac). Then you will need to skim over the cracked surface with a thin coat of drywall compound to fill in and level the cracks, sand, reprime and paint.



You MIGHT get away with priming (solvent primer), and repainting with a couple of coats of a low sheen paint - which MIGHT fill in the hair line cracks and sort of level them out. I would stay away from flat (particularly the very flat paint that you already used, as it may be poorly formulated and prone to mud cracking) when recoating in this situation.

Answer 6

Mabye Your not using the right type of paint for the wall first?

Make sure you always do a tester on the wall before! It should sort itself out if you apply a certain amount of coats!

Hoped this helped!:)

Answer 7

You need to be sure the walls are clean first, and then you need to be sure you are using the right kind of paint.

Answer 8

What have you painted it with? Try using Polycell Base Coat first then paint emulsion over the top. If you've just smacked a coat of paint on a bare wall then I'm not surprised.

Answer 9

sounds like you have painted over contaminated wall surface probably wall paper paste.



solution

line the wall with 1000 grade lining paper allow to dry then paint over it.

Answer 10

Ditto Propeno and Matt.

Answer 11

did you prep the wall before painting? it needs to be free from dust and grease and sealed with pva mixed with water. if you paint on top of it it will flake off.

Answer 12

was it a really really hot day when you did it? Ours got heaps of cracks in it and started peeling when we painted when it was too hot...