If you are embarking on your first faux painting project, then it’s worth ensuring that you’ve mastered the essentials. Beginners may make some errors that prevent them attaining the effect that they’re looking for.

1. Poor materials yield poor results. With the right brushes and paint and importantly, a properly prepared surface, you will be well on the way to achieving the look you want. A surface painted with flat paint will not give you good results and subsequent layers will dry too fast to allow you to attend to mistakes.

Low gloss paints will give you a brighter finish than flat paint, which has a dulling effect on subsequent layers. The best base coat is satin or eggshell paint that dries slowly, giving you time to attend to any problems.

2. You may be tempted by artist’s palettes and specially designed sponges and applicators. Save your money for good paints and brushes. Gadgets and special tools aren’t necessary. A soft sponge sold for household cleaning will do for applying color washes and an ice cube tray doubles as a practical paint palette.

A money saving tip is to put any leftover paint in your freezer, to thaw and use later, rather than letting it dry and go to waste. Another economy measure is to use dishwashing liquid for cleaning brushes, instead of buying expensive professional products. It will even work on some partly oil based paints.

3. Your results depend on the surface you start with. You must fill cracks and cavities before you start, but it doesn’t end there. You then need to sand it and seal it with a water based sealant. To ensure sure that the patch job blends in with the surroundings you need to make sure it is the same colour. Use the original paint if you have it or, alternatively, you can tint the sealant using some acrylic paint of the appropriate color. Don’t cut corners on surface preparation – flaws will show through.

4. Keep oil and water based paints separate at all costs. Knowing the ingredients of your paints can save you from catastrophe. For example, don’t assume that latex paint is an oil paint. It is partly water and so will not mix with oil paint.

5. Dirt can spell disaster. Brushes that haven’t been properly cleaned are a key cause of problems, including color contamination. There’s a middle way between casual rinsing of your brushes and splurging on expensive custom cleaning products. In your art shop look for cleaning pads in the childrens section. The same item targeted at professional artists will cost you a lot more.

Paint is designed to spread and spread it will – on shoes and in many other ways too. If you’re working for a client, this is a sure way to ruin your reputation. Accidents do happen, but there are ways of dealing with them. Using water or chemical cleaners on carpets is not advisable, since at best it can spread the paint further. You can try trimming the stain with nail scissors when it has dried. If the worst comes to the worst, a product called Goof Off is a useful remedy.

6. Wet and dry don’t mix. If you’re using glazes you need to make sure that you’re not creating areas where wet paint meets dry edges. The dry paint won’t spread at the meeting point and the join will show. Plan to paint areas in one session, without a break. That includes, telephone, tea and toilet interludes. The hotter the weather the faster you will need to work before areas of glaze dries.

7. What’s your painting style? Style is a product of the way a person habitually applies paint and painting a wall or floor is no exception. If two people paint adjacent areas of the same wall, the difference is likely to be quite obvious. The same applies to a single person’s work at different stages of the process. If your faux painting project is a collaborative effort, assign different people to different walls, or at least alternate layers. Plan to complete sections that need to look uniform in one go.