How to Paint a Dusty Basement

Remove all clutter from the basement, including boxes, knickknacks and anything that isn’t a piece of furniture. The more things you can remove from the basement, the better. Creating an open and relatively empty environment will help in the cleaning and painting process.

Dust all remaining furniture. Sweep and mop the floors.

Move all furniture away from the walls, leaving a space of at least 4 feet between the basement walls and the furniture. Ideally, you’ll move all furniture into one large pile in the middle of the room or rooms. There should be plenty of space to walk between the furniture and the walls. Sweep and mop again to clean areas that were previously hidden under furniture.

Dust walls using a wall and ceiling duster to remove the most obvious dirt from the walls. Pay special attention to the corners where there may be spider webs and ground in dirt.

Wash all walls with trisodium phosphate (follow the manufacturer’s instructions) to get the remaining dust from the walls. Trisodium phosphate is a cleaning agent often used on walls before painting because, in addition to cleaning, it helps to create a more absorbent surface for the paint to adhere to. Trisodium phosphate is available at home improvement stores.

Cover the floors and furniture in tarps. Tape the tarps to the floor near the base of the walls, and tape tarps to the furniture.

Prep the walls for paint by removing faceplates on wall switches and outlets. Fill in holes with spackling, then sand it down. Tape the edges of the walls with painter's tape.

Paint the walls using rollers and paintbrushes, as you would with any other room.