Buying a house, it’s gonna need an immediate run around with fresh emulsion to clear the colour choice crimes of the 70s, walls otherwise appear to be sound.

It’s occurred to me spray painting may be a viable diy option. Before I delve into researching technique and equipment, is this a reasonable idea?

Buy or hire kit? Any limitations? Paint types? Tips?

Cheers

I know from some of the admittedly budget sprayers I’ve used you’ll be thinning down the paint to different degrees to allow them to work. If you have a large colour change to make you might struggle with 2 coats meaning you’re left waiting another day to put a third on. It may end up that you could have been quicker with a roller and brush due to the extra paint thickness.
There’s also the extra prep/masking and whatnot you’ll have to factor in.
If you get yourself organised and have a few roller sleeves on the go you’ll be able to go through the house room by room putting coats on making use of your wait times.

Screwfix have an erbauer branded sprayer for £45 that looks to be well reviewed though; I don’t suppose it’s too much money to test out the idea.

Great if the house is striped within furniture, no carpet or finished flooring. If not, the prep time will eclipse that of simply breaking out the roller and brush.
Spraying is essentially delivering paint to the walls, you still need to backrolll to get your regular Finish unless you never want to be able to touch up with anything but spraybombed paint.

Roller needs drop cloths, spay equipment needs full airtight masking. Windows, doors floors and and all

A mate of mine has a decorating firm who specialise in spraying. I’ve helped him on numerous jobs and even had a couple goes. It’s not particularly difficult and it’s very quick.
But, the kit is expensive, you need a mountain of poly and tape for masking. A van full of dust sheets if you want to keep the carpets or cover the doors.
Paint wise, trade emulsion, thinned by about 20%.
We spray the walls first, then the ceilings but come down onto the top of the wall by a few inches. We then either cut the top of wall in by hand or give a full roller coat. This is because sprayed walls have a very flat finish and can’t easily be ‘touched in’ if marked.
The kit must be cleaned really well at the end of each day, this takes around an hour but is essential to prevent the machine getting bunged up.
Try your local Brewers paint merchant as they supply spray kit and should know of a local sprayer. HTH

Ok, that’s been incredibly helpful. I see there’s a trade off; I’m imagining when I move in I’ll have bare rooms and ready to remove carpets immediately. The reality might be different, in which case it might be easier to break out the roller.

No no no…. Definitely do it but post a video.

(Or just get a roller)

A mate bought an empty terrace house and sprayed it. In his case no need for dust sheets and masking. sprayed and then left it for a day and it looked okay.

We use a very big and professional decorating firm and they never spray internal plastered walls, it only really comes out on blockwork and intumiscent work. Make of that what you will.
Conversely our electrician recently bought a “sprayer” from screwfix to do his offices up and his words were “it’s shit”

Bought a high end domestic one to try painting our new build. Wasn’t successful. You have to spend a vast amount of time masking and then don’t notice that a bit of tape has come unstuck. You waste a huge amount of paint (a lot of spray ends up on the floor). Hard to get a good finish without runs.

Bought the most expensive one from B&Q recently. Said it worked with any emulsion without thinning the paint. That was clearly wrong. Unless you have a paint system matched to the sprayer I wouldn’t bother as there is so much trial and error to get the flow right that you could have filleted the first room before you’ve even got the sprayer working.

Look at an airless unit such as a wagner power painter 60 as a minimum really. This is a powerful enough unit but not overkill.

You can get used to the feel of a sprayer by running water through it first and practicing outside on a brick wall or fence. This will let you get used to the different pressures and spray pattern.

If the house has original features such as coving and ceiling roses or high ceilings etc then spraying can save you a lot of time especially in empty houses with no carpet down. The finish you get is only as good as the prep beforehand though remember.

I do it for a living, I had some new build 3 storey town houses to do so looked at hiring an airless spray unit but it was very expensive so bit the bullet and bought one. Was about £700 but it’s the best money I’ve spent.
I spend a day going round masking and cutting in then 1 1/2 days blasting the walls and ceilings with 3 coats, easy peasy.
Also bought a unit for the woodwork, another £600 but they were both paid for after a couple of houses.No idea why more decs aren’t using sprayers