Try This Easy Hack To Remove Lint From Your Paint Roller For A Seamless Application

There's nothing more frustrating than spending hours on a painting job only to discover your paint roller has left lint behind. So much for that perfect satin smoothness! 

Paint roller covers, even when they're not splattering paint everywhere, are notorious for shedding fibers during application. Choosing the right paint roller cover will depend on a number of factors, including your wall texture and the sheen or gloss of paint you're using. But even within these confines, certain roller covers may leave a lot of lint behind. Just like any product, lower-cost options tend to be made with lower quality materials and don't perform as well. The prevailing wisdom is to spend a little more money upfront to get a high-quality product that will shed less and last longer.

However, whether you go cheap or expensive, there is an easy hack to avoid this problem before you even apply the first drop of paint so that you can have seamless, lint-free walls. All it takes is a roll of tape! 

Since painting invariably involves taping, you already have everything you need for this simple hack. As soon as you take your roller cover out of the package, you're ready to make it lint-free. You can easily achieve this in a few different ways. The first, as demonstrated by the TikTok channel CR Carpentry & Remodeling, is to unroll a couple feet of masking tape or duct tape and tuck it under the toe of your shoe, sticky side toward you. Then just run the roller up and down the tape to remove the lint. You should only need to do this a few times, but make sure you've got all the lint off before you start painting.

A second way to achieve a similar result is to wrap the roller cover entirely in masking tape, as demonstrated on YouTube by Todd A Hess Painting Co, and then just rip all the tape off (taking the lint fibers with it!). That said, the speed and efficiency of the method outlined by CR Carpentry & Remodeling is hard to beat, since it takes minimal time to do if you're already at work painting a room, and uses far less tape to get the fiber problem fixed. Regardless of which method you choose, removing lint from your paint roller before applying paint to your walls will help you achieve a seamless and perfectly smooth paint application free of unwanted blemishes. 

Of course, if you want to try minimizing this problem from the outset, you can start by striving to get the right roller cover for your walls, for the right price. 

In that regard, the top-of-the-line roller covers that tend to shed the least are woven and typically made of mohair, which comes from goats. The reason these covers shed less is that their fibers are woven very tightly together and locked to the backing of the roller cover, making them practically lint-free. Microfiber is also a good option for a lint-free painting experience. Because microfiber is a synthetic (or non-natural) material much smaller than the diameter of a human hair, it leaves a flawless finish. Knit roller covers, on the other hand, tend to shed a lot more. These covers are generally lower priced and made of polyester. Because of their more loosely sewn fabric, they are more prone to leaving their fibers behind on your walls.

No matter which route you go between woven, microfiber, or knit, you are still likely to experience some shedding. But at least this simple hack using just tape can help you avoid getting any lint from the roller painted into your walls.