Paint cares about the surface temperature, not just what the thermostat says. Air comes up to temperature in minutes; walls can take hours.

•     Heat the room the evening before, maintain 18–20°C, and treat 15°C as your absolute floor.

•     Keep the heat on after you finish. The paint film is still drying for hours and curing for days. A heater switched off at 5pm is where most winter paint jobs go wrong.

•     Use dry heat panel heaters, oil column heaters, fan heaters, heat pumps. Unflued gas and LPG release litres of water vapour as they burn. And never aim a heater at a wet wall, or you'll dry the surface faster than the paint underneath and end up with patchy sheen.

•     Check the cold spots. External walls, corners and walls behind furniture run colder than the rest of the room. Put a flat hand on them and give the cold ones longer to warm up.

•     Bring paint and tools into the room 24 hours ahead, not the garage. Cold paint drags on the roller, won't level out, and leaves visible edges where wet meets dry. Stir slowly from the bottom up once warmed.

Winter homes hold moisture, and moisture affects adhesion, so prep matters more now than it does in January.

•     Treat mould first. Dark spotting around sills, corners or behind furniture has to be killed and cleaned off with our Eco Mould Kill - it’s non-toxic, bleach free and extremely effective at removing mould and stopping it returning. Painting over mould only hides it for a season. 

•     Wipe the walls down. Kitchens and living areas collect grease and dust over winter, especially near heat sources - sugar soap is a great solution here.

•     Sand for adhesion. A light sand with 180–240 grit is plenty for a well-prepped surface. Go easy on gloss paint, feather out filler, and be sure to knock off old nibs and drips.

•     Dust off, wipe with a barely damp cloth, and let it dry. A damp wall in a cold room can stay damp for hours, and rushing an undercoat traps that moisture under your topcoat.

Short, grey days look like a reason to stop painting, but painters treat them as free quality control. Low winter sun rakes across a wall at a shallow angle, throwing long shadows off every nail pop, filler dent and patch line, which is exactly what you want to see before you paint, not after. Walk each wall mid-morning and again mid-afternoon with the lights off, and mark what the light finds.

South-facing rooms are where people get caught out, because they never see direct sun. Brush a few test pots straight onto the wall and look at them morning, midday and at night under your lights. Winter light exaggerates cool tones, so if a grey is going to read blue in your lounge, it’s far better to find out now instead of later in the year.

Faint tan streaks or soapy-looking glossy patches on a fresh wall, usually in a bathroom or on a wall that got cold overnight, are surfactant leaching. They are the most common winter painting complaint.

Surfactants are what keep water-based paint stable in the tin and help it flow and level out on the wall. Normally they evaporate off or lock into the film as it dries, but if the film meets cold, damp air before it sets, they get pulled to the surface early and concentrate in streaks. It's purely cosmetic, and it shows up more in deeper shades.

Leaching can be avoided if you follow the correct steps above, but if it does appear, don't paint over it. Instead, let the film harden for a few days, then wash gently with warm water and a soft cloth. Wiping too early can pull more surfactant out.  If it does come back after one wash, repeat a few more times as necessary until it stops.