One of the best bits about moving into a new home is making it your own. You’ve chosen the furniture, started finding a home for everything and there’s probably already a list of rooms you’d like to paint.
But when is it actually OK to start decorating a new-build? You don’t have to live with blank walls forever, but it is worth knowing what’s happening behind the scenes before you start.
Why new homes need time to settle
There’s a surprising amount of moisture involved in building a home. Plaster, concrete, mortar and paint all need water, and some of that moisture will still be working its way out of the building after you move in.
As everything dries, materials can shrink slightly. That’s when you might start to see the odd fine crack around a door frame, along a skirting board or where the wall meets the ceiling. It’s called shrinkage or settlement and it’s common in new homes.
If you decorate straight away, there’s a chance you’ll end up touching up your freshly painted wall when one of these little cracks appears. Waiting a while simply means you’re more likely to get a finish that lasts.
How long do you need to wait?
There isn’t a magic date to put in the diary.
How quickly a home dries depends on all sorts of things, including the weather, how you heat it and how well ventilated it is. A home going through its first warm summer will dry differently from one heading straight into a cold, wet winter. Check the information provided when we handed over your home before starting any major decorating. If you’re still not sure, our Customer Care team can advise you.
In the meantime, help your home dry out
You don’t need to do anything drastic here.
Use your heating as you normally would, keep trickle vents open and use the extractor fans in your kitchen and bathrooms. Fresh air moving through the house will help moisture escape naturally.
There’s no benefit in turning the heating up high to try to hurry things along. In fact, drying a new home too quickly can encourage more shrinkage.
What should you do about small cracks?
For the most part, nothing immediately. If you spot a fine settlement crack, make a note of it and leave it while your home continues to settle. Once you’re ready to decorate, small cosmetic cracks can usually be prepared and filled as part of the job.
If something looks more substantial than a fine crack, seems to be changing or just doesn’t look right to you, get in touch with our Customer Care team before filling or decorating over it. We’d rather you ask.
Ready to pick up a paintbrush?
Once your home has had time to dry and you’re ready to decorate, you can start having some fun with it.
Before painting, check that the wall is clean, dry and properly prepared. It’s worth choosing products that are suitable for the surface too, rather than assuming the same paint will work everywhere. And our top tip? Buy a tester pot. Colours can look completely different in your home compared with the little card you picked up in the shop. Try a few patches and look at them in the morning, afternoon and evening before committing to the whole room. You’ll thank yourself later.
What about wallpaper?
We’d be a little more patient with wallpaper. Wallpaper covers the surface of the wall and can make it harder for any remaining moisture to escape. Putting it up before the walls have properly dried can also affect the finish. Once your home has settled and dried, you’ll have a much better surface to work with.
You can still make it feel like home
Of course, decorating isn’t just about changing the walls. There’s something quite nice about living in a new home for a while before deciding exactly what you want to do with it. The room you thought needed a feature wall might not need one at all once the furniture is in. You might realise the afternoon light completely changes the colour you had in mind.
Pictures, lamps, rugs, cushions and furniture can do a lot in the meantime and you can move them around as many times as you like. But remember, there’s no prize for having every room finished in the first month or pressuring yourself to get it insta-ready.
Get settled, see how you use the space and let your home do a bit of settling too. When you are ready to decorate, you’ll probably have a much better idea of what you want from it. And that’s when it really starts to feel like yours.
