Swap Your Spray Paint Nozzle With A Cap You Already Have For Amazing Paint Results

Spray paint is most often in the public consciousness during discussions of street art and tagged buildings, like when abandoned high-rises became tourist attractions after street artists decorate them with graffiti. However, it can also play a huge part in defining your private home decor. You can spray paint your walls and ceiling for a faster application than traditional rollers, for example, and one canister of gold or matte black paint could be all you need to upcycle a piece of furniture. However, getting fine detail can be tough with traditional spray nozzles that are literally designed to hit the broad side of a barn, so consider swapping it out with the nozzle from a product you undoubtedly already have on hand: WD-40.

Originally invented as an anti-rust solvent for Atlas missiles in the 1950s, WD-40 became a household name for its use on the Friendship VII orbiter (the product was later inducted into the San Diego Air & Space Museum Hall of Fame as a result), and by 1993 the WD-40 company claimed it to be in 80% of U.S. households. Most importantly for potential spray paint augmentation, your WD-40 likely utilizes the Smart Straw nozzle topper introduced in 2005. TikTok user @jmg8tor showcased the usefulness of swapping in a WD-40 Smart Straw to get multiple spray patterns out of a single paint canister, and there's opportunity to expand the idea even further.

Swapping your spray paint's nozzle is trivially easy to do. With the canister's cap removed, you can pluck that spraying nib right off the can, and then replace it with your WD-40 Smart Straw. That red topper should come off of its recognizable blue canister just as easily with a twist and a pull, and then it can be affixed to the paint can via a gray piece at the base of the nozzle. From there, your spray painting prowess has literally doubled as you have access to a broader spray pattern with the straw down, as well as a concentrated stream through the raised straw that may help you paint more perfectly clean lines without nearly as much tape or as much paint splashing back on your fingers.

Though this hack itself is a useful way to get more out of your spray paint, its true benefit is the knowledge of how much limitless potential your painting could have. The WD-40 company alone offers multiple types of nozzled products that you could swap in, from the flexible EZ-REACH straw to wider Big Blast canisters, each giving you different spray patterns to work with. Given the variety of nozzles you could adapt from other types of spray bottles, there are no doubt ways to continue mixing and matching for the desired effect while doing art projects with children or completing some crazy easy spray paint DIY tutorials.