How can I learn spray painting?
You may be a decorator who has many years of experience in painting, or you may be a career changer who has heard about spray painting, and you may be thinking about learning how to spray.
There are several ways to learn how to spray; some are more effective than others.
First, you could teach yourself. Buy a sprayer, read the manual, and “have a go” on your own house. In our experience, this strategy either does not work or is a very long and frustrating way to get into spray painting.
We have spoken to many people who have tried to “have a go”, and the stories are very similar. It goes something like this…
You buy a sprayer; you have no idea which sprayer to buy because it seems like a minefield out there. Some sprayers are £200, and some are £2000. There are many different types too. Anyway, you bite the bullet and buy the one you think is right for you.
The next stage is getting the sprayer working. For this, you jump onto YouTube and watch some videos. Unfortunately, there are many different paint and surface combinations that you are unsure which paint to start with and what set up to spray that paint.
You decide to spray emulsion and get the sprayer going. However, you seem to have a few problems, and you cannot get a good result, you have no one to ask, and, in the end, you give up. The sprayer goes into the shed, never to be seen again.
The other approach is to do a course in spray painting. You do some research, and you find there are a number of courses out there. Some are cheap, and some are expensive, and you are not quite sure if it is worth it.
Our advice would be that a course will save you months of problems and actually get you going making money from day 1. Check the reviews of the training provider that you are thinking of using before booking, though.
The teaching staff at PaintTech Training Academy have many years of experience both delivering courses and spraying. The courses that we provide use the latest spray technology and use a range of the best products.
It is easy to book on a course, you can either just give us a call, and we will talk through the best spray painting courses for you and then book you on if you want. Alternatively, you can look at the available dates online and book yourself if you already know what you want.
Once you book, you will receive an email to confirm your booking and explain what you need to bring and the address of the training centre you are going to.
We only run courses with small numbers so that you get a lot of time spraying. A typical course will have 6 people on it. When you arrive, you will get yourself a brew, and the tutor will have a chat with you to find out what your experience is and what you are looking to gain from the course. The two-day course is mainly practical and is done in a workshop with ceilings, walls and woodwork.
There is some classroom work, and this is done in the first couple of hours. This gives you a chance to learn about the equipment and how it works.
You will do loads of hands-on spraying, and by the end of the second day, you will feel confident to go out on a job to spray. Finally, we offer ongoing support after the course is complete.
This is in the form of a private Facebook group called PTA support. This group only has people that have done the course and is a mine of information and advice to the budding sprayer. The admission into the support group is worth its weight in gold.
At this point, you may be asking, “Well yeah, this all sounds great, but what difference will it make to my business?” This is a great question, and the answer is that it will be different for each person who attends the course. However, there are two main things that everyone experiences after the course.
First, you will start to earn more money because you will complete your work in a shorter time. This is a significant attraction to decorators; even if you double the amount of work you complete, you will double your earnings. This is a lot. Many of our students’ feedback says they have doubled, trebled, or even quadrupled their earnings.
Second, you will produce a higher standard of finish. Your ceilings will look excellent and perfect. The woodwork will be perfect. This is something that the customer will notice, so while the increased speed is an obvious benefit to you, the improved finish will bring in more work in the future.
Many decorators cannot decide if they should start to spray painting.
We think that it is a simple decision that you can make right now, and the decision is “Am I going to go down the spraying road or not?”
If the answer is “yes”, then it does not matter how long it takes to get up to speed. In five years, you will be there and making good money.
If the answer is “no”, then fair enough, forget about it and carry on with the brush and roller. However, in five or ten years, you may find that you have been left behind, and the industry has changed under your feet.
In the States, decorators use spraying much more than we do. Over there, the trade is split into two camps.
The spraying camp makes good money and get a lot of work; the none spraying camp earns less. We think this is what will happen here over the next ten years.
The Only City & Guilds Assured Spraying Courses [Find Out More]
Is it hard to learn spray painting?
When students ring us up to ask about getting into spray painting, one of the questions that they ask is, “Am I going to be able to do this? Is it hard?” A good question. The simple answer is that “Yes” you will be able to do it after the course. How do we know this? Well, we have taught many people how to spray, and once they know what they are doing, they go on and successfully spray everything.
Having said this, spray painting can be challenging if you do not know what you are doing. Several things can go wrong and will go wrong if you don’t see what you are doing or you do not have any support.
Spraying is one of those skills that looks easy when a trained person is doing it but can be very messy in the hands of an amateur.
Do I need a qualification to be a spray-painter?
You may be thinking about changing careers and becoming a spray painter. You have heard how much money you can earn, and you have also heard that there is a lot of demand for the skill. The first question you may be asking is, do I need to be qualified to get a job as a paint sprayer.
As always, the answer is “it depends”, many companies will give you a chance if you are experienced but do not have any qualifications. Car sprayers go to college and get a qualification in spraying; however, decorators are different.
Some decorators have served their time at a company and been to college to get a qualification. This qualification will only have a small part covering spraying, so it is not a spraying qualification. This means that even though many decorators are qualified, they are not really qualified sprayers.
One of the reasons why PaintTech Training Academy is so successful is that we have developed spraying courses that meet the needs of the industry, and we have worked with City and Guilds to get these courses assured.
This means that if you do a course, you will get a certificate with the City and Guilds badge on it. This goes a long way to show an employer that you have done a course and that you can spray commercially.
How to qualify as a spray painter?
Depending on your background and what you would like to spray, there are three routes open to you.
If you want to be a car sprayer, then it would be better to get a job as a trainee sprayer and then go to college one day a week and get a qualification.
If you want to be a decorator and you also want to spray, you would do the same, get a job as a trainee decorator, and then go to college to get a qualification in decorating, which will incorporate a small amount of spraying.
Finally, if you intend only to spray and not be a general decorator, then you could do a course with PaintTech Training Academy and get a City and Guilds qualification.
We offer four main spray painting routes:
1. Spray painting the inside of houses, for example, ceiling, walls and woodwork, for this we have our Intensive airless spraying course. This teaches you how to spray a house to an excellent finish; we also discuss paints, products and systems.
2. Spray painting kitchens, another big market these days, is spraying existing kitchens to a finish; this allows the customer to get a new look kitchen as a fraction of the cost of buying a new one. For this, we have our Kitchen and furniture spraying course.
3. Spray painting uPVC is a fast-growing market, and customers want their old, tired plastic windows spraying to a new colour and finish. Once sprayed, they look like new again at a fraction of the cost (and mess) of new windows.
4. Spray plaster Finally, a new plastering system has been developed, which allows you to apply plaster using a sprayer. This is both fast, and the finish is fantastic. Many companies have started spraying plaster and are struggling to get the staff that can do it.
All these courses have a City and Guilds badge on them so that your certificate has value.
