Putty Quantity Calculator for Dubai and the UAE

Wall putty is a fine white powder that is mixed with water into a smooth paste and spread thinly over a wall with a blade.

Its job is to make the wall flat. Plaster and gypsum come out of the wall reasonably straight, but never perfectly smooth. There are trowel lines, small hollows, sanding marks and joints. Putty fills all of that.

It goes on in this order. Any big repairs first, like filling cracks or holes. Then putty, in one, two or three thin coats. Then sanding. Then primer. Then paint.

It is not the same as filler. Filler goes into a specific hole. Putty goes over a whole surface.

The answer depends almost entirely on how bad the wall is before you start.

Paint does not hide anything. It is thin and it follows the shape of whatever is underneath.

This matters most where light runs along a wall rather than straight at it. In the evening, a lamp near a wall or a strip of light from a window picks out every ripple. That is when a badly prepared wall shows.

People often blame the paint for this. They think a better brand would have looked flatter. It would not. Two coats of the best paint in the world over a wavy wall gives you a wavy wall with a nice colour.

This is also why a cheap quote and an expensive quote for the same room can be so far apart. The cheap one is often two coats of paint on the wall as it is. The expensive one includes the putty, the sanding and the dust, which is days of work.

If a wall will have a light shining down it, or a silk finish that catches the light, the putty stage matters twice as much.

A few things that make the difference between a smooth wall and a mess.

No, and it is worth saying so.

A wall that was painted a few years ago, is still flat, and only needs a colour change does not need putting again. Wash it, fill the picture hook holes, sand those spots, spot prime them and paint. Adding a full skim of putty to a good wall is money and days spent for nothing.

Where putty is not optional is a new build, a wall that has just been plastered, a wall with a lot of old repairs, or a wall where a previous paint job has been peeled or scraped back.

The way to tell is to look along the wall with a light, as above. If the wall is flat under a raking light, leave it alone. If it is not, no amount of paint will fix it.