As a professional decorator I am always on the lookout for quality painting equipment including rollers and have a veritable arsenal of roller sleeves for every surface type and paint type. Some give rough finishes when used on exterior pebble dash rendering deposition a lot of paint in a none too glamorous fashion, while other achieve a smooth finish but a have a nap so short it can take a long time to cover a surface because these rollers don’t hold enough paint.
As a painter you are sometimes wishing the impossible when it comes to rollers. Able to provide a smooth finish but also hold a lot of paint. Luckily there are now a range of Microfibre roller sleeves that can produce the impossible. That happy medium.
Microfibre rollers, like the cleaning clothes, have more fibre per inch on a roller core meaning they are able to take in and hold onto more fluid (paint) than other sleeve types. In the real world this means you are able to paint larger areas, less trips to the roller tray and less chances of paint drips when loading up the roller and rollering a surface.
I’ve used the sleeves in both exterior masonry paint and interior emulsions and have found they work exceptionally well in both types of paint. Masonry can be a bit thicker than interior emulsion paint, but the roller has no issue with pick up of the paint or depositing it onto the surface.
One tip I would give is to pre wash the roller before painting. This is simply running the roller sleeve under water for 10 seconds, making sure the whole roller is wet, then spin out to remove the excess water leaving the Microfibre roller damp. This technique saturates the fibres and leaves them ready to receive paint better as soon as you start painting. If not done the first few roller passes can be patchy.
Because the roller holds more paint cleaning them can take slightly longer but a thorough clean will leave it ready for the next painting project.
