Spray Painting vs. Painting With a Roller: Which Is Best?

Should you use a paint sprayer or a paint roller when you are painting your home's interior or exterior? Paint spraying is fast and capable of covering rough textures that rollers can't touch, yet the preparation work is extensive. Paint rollers have less prep work and the tools are less expensive, but it's very labor-intensive.

Which is best: paint spraying or paint rolling, and when should you choose one over the other?

When to Use a Paint Sprayer or a Paint Roller

No answer is ever cut-and-dried, but generally:

• Use a paint sprayer for exteriors or for interiors when the house is empty. If you already own a paint sprayer, that can induce you to spray rather than roll, since airless paint sprayers cost $300, as a starting price.
• Use a paint roller for house interiors, especially if the house is occupied. The extensive masking and taping required for an occupied house full of stuff just aren't worth it for most homeowners. You can use a paint roller for house exteriors when the siding has enough flat surfaces that are conducive to rollers.

When to Use a Paint Sprayer

While rolling has its points, paint sprayers do exist for a good reason: they are fast. You may wish to use a paint sprayer for any of these conditions.

Use a Sprayer When the Interior Is Empty

When the room is in the early phases of building or remodeling, it is a blank canvas. This canvas lends itself well to paint spraying.

You can spray with near-freedom, masking off only a few key areas such as plumbing stub-outs, electrical boxes, and windows. When a room is at this point of remodeling, it will always be faster to spray than to roll the paint.

Use a Sprayer When Painting Exteriors

Exteriors with mature landscaping, extensive decking, sunrooms, playsets, garages, and anything else close to the house that will not be painted significantly drags down your preparation time.

A clear perimeter means that you need to mask items on the house and less around the house, though it's usually expected that you'll need to lay out a cloth dropcloth directly below the wall.

Use a Sprayer When Texturizing Walls

Texture can be applied to interior walls either with a hopper-style gun sprayer or with a paint roller. The hopper gun is attached to a compressed air hose. The V-shaped hopper is filled with wet texture product, then sprayed onto the walls, where it quickly dries.

You can texture a wall with a roller by thinning drywall compound with water in a 4:1 ratio, and then rolling the mixture on the walls, just like paint.

If you have access to a compressor and hopper gun, it will usually be easier and faster to apply the texture with those tools instead of rolling on the texture. 

Use a Sprayer With Details and Texture

Paint sprayers make short work of complicated textures, such as those found on crown molding, popcorn or cottage cheese ceilings, built-up baseboards, deep exterior textures, cornices, dentils, or masonry.

Paint sprayers have the ability to work into the narrowest crevices, laying down a thin coat. By contrast, brushing or rolling detailed surfaces can result in pooled-up paint and drips.

Keep in mind that all of the detail work needs to be the same color to warrant using the paint sprayer. Otherwise, using a brush is the best way to paint detail work of more than one color.

Use a Sprayer When Masking Is Not an Issue

If you don't mind masking and taping surfaces—and some people may like the precision of it—then spraying on paint is for you. That's because you will need to do extensive taping and masking if you don't have a wide-open, empty canvas.

If you're working with a partner, this is the perfect way to split up the labor: one person tapes and masks, then the second person sprays the paint.

When You Should Use a Paint Roller

Use a Roller as the Default Painting Method

Using a paint roller is the default painting method for most do-it-yourselfers, both inside and outside. This method is flexible, cost-effective, and excellent at laying down paint with a minimum of coats.

Roller, roller cover, paint tray, and tray liner: these are your four main painting supplies when rolling. Also, with the roller method, it is easy to jump into your painting project for a while, then put it on pause so you can attend to the rest of your life. Paint spraying is an all-or-nothing project that consumes your entire day.

Use a Roller to Cover Problem Surfaces

While it is always best to thoroughly clean the surface before painting, sometimes this doesn't happen. If so, paint rolling is here to help. Paint rolling allows you more leeway when the surface isn't perfectly clean.

Rolled paint goes on thick on the initial coat. Most surfaces only require two coats. Problem surfaces may require three coats. A paint roller is less prone to patchiness than paint spraying, so you get a more consistent, even surface.

Use a Roller If You Haven't Used a Sprayer

As a do-it-yourselfer, it's difficult to go wrong with rolling on the paint. Painting professionals agree rolling paint produces a thick paint layer and excellent color consistency. Paint spraying may seem easy at first, but it can be tricky to learn to do well. If you have never used a paint sprayer before, now may not be the best time to learn.

Use a Roller If You Dislike Masking

While you do need to mask out some areas when paint-rolling, it does not compare to the huge amount of masking you will need to do when spraying.

Consider that with paint spraying, every square inch that you don't want to be painted must be masked in film or with a drop cloth. Whatever you neglect to mask when spraying will get painted, like it or not. Rolling vastly reduces the amount of masking you will need to do.

Use a Roller If You Are Only Painting Walls

Are you painting only the walls and not the ceiling? This factor may tip the decision in the direction of paint-rolling.

When you roll on paint, it is relatively easy to exclude the ceiling. There is no need to use masking film on the ceiling when rolling walls. A tape dispenser helps you create long, straight runs of painter's tape on the ceiling.

Use a Roller to Stay Within Budget

Paint spraying wastes an incredible amount of paint when the atomized paint drifts away. When you use a paint roller, nearly every drop ends up on the surface. The only part of the paint that goes away is the water content that evaporates.

Also factor in the cost of tools. All roller items are inexpensive compared to the purchase and maintenance of a paint sprayer. A good roller setup costs less than $50, while even an entry-level paint sprayer will cost several times that amount.