How to know how much paint to buy
So you've decided on a paint job, the question is how do you know how much paint to buy?
There are several things to consider when buying paint for your next project. The first is space to cover. If you're covering a wall or a room, it's fairly easy because it's measurable. Most paint experts at a paint store or local home improvement store can tell you how much paint you'll need per coat per so many hundred feet. Additionally, many brands have websites that offer that information as well. That's the easy part, but if you're painting furniture or designs or something that can't be measured by length and width, it's a bit of a different story. You can do some basic measurements, adding for lips and edges that overlap. If worst comes to worst and you simply have no idea, try taking a picture and taking that picture to the paint store along with a description like "the chair is as high as my elbow and as wide as my arms and looks like this" and hand them the picture. If nothing else, they'll be amused and you'll have made someone's day, but hopefully they're used to this sort of thing and can give you a good guestimate on how much paint you'll need.
You also need to consider what type of surface you're painting. A basic drywall surface should typically have a coat of primer and two coats of paint. If you're painting a dark color over a light color you may only use one coat of primer and one of paint, especially if you have the store tint the primer to match the paint. If you're painting a light color over a dark, plan on primer in the brightest white you can get, maybe even two coats, to neutralize the dark color and then start on your light coats. What do I mean by neutralize the color with primer and why not just do several coats of the lighter color? We all know that red and yellow make orange and blue and yellow make green and so on. When you paint a lighter color over a darker color, you often get the result of those color combinations instead of the lighter color. Even if you put several coats of the lighter color. If you start with a white primer, it helps to "neutralize" the darker color so that you're not getting a mixture.
In the above paragraph I mentioned the basic number of coats needed for a basic drywall surface, which you can add into the so many square feet need so many gallons of paint formula that you've already gotten from your helpful paint store clerk or paint website. However, maybe you're not painting a basic drywall surface. If you're painting a porous surface (such as brick, concrete, or some types of wood), or one with many jags and/or crevasses (such as stucco or stone) you'll need to plan on extra coats of paint, sometimes many extra coats. If you can apply the first coats with a sprayer and let them really soak in and dry, you'll end up using less paint than if you use a brush or roller to fill in the pores in the surface, and you'll finish the job a lot faster.
Remember, there are basic formulas that help, and never hesitate to get the advice of a professional, but when it's all over, you're going to have not quite enough or a little too much, and that's okay.
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