It was already dry yesterday. It's even drier this morning, and the streaks are still there

I guarantee that another coat will see it all alright.

I'll be recoating it tomorrow afternoon

Are you painting white over white BTW?

Fine cream over cream - ie pretty much white over yellowy white.

How does the cutting in look?

Is it even?

Cutting in? I thought that meant painting carefully up to the edges? The bits I cut-in with the brush are the same extra intensity as the vertical strips I mentioned.

Yes, the bits at the angles of walls and around doors, window frames, light switches etc, where you use a a brush.

Basically, because you're using a brush the paint is applied more thickly and evenly (I hope you've got a nice feathering action with the brush), so that's what the thinner areas of the wall will look like when a second coat is applied - it'll all look even is what I am saying.

Creamy colours can be a bit temperamental in my experience.

Once you apply a second coat - or in this case where the roller has overlapped - the finish can look quite different.

Basically there's no getting past the fact it'll need another entire coat.

With plain white emulsion you can get away with it much more easily.

BTW, any areas that get third coats won't appear different as it has after the first - the paint has a limit of opacity.

Nightjar wrote:

BTW, any areas that get third coats won't appear different as it has after the first - the paint has a limit of opacity.

Ah now that's a good point.

I'm impressed that you know so much about painting as pertains both to the fine arts and the useful arts.

I'm not saying that fine art is not useful. 'Useful arts' is an old-fashioned expression for technology.

A lot of the way I've used paint as an artist has been in either a highly technical, almost microscopic in manner or as an industrial process - hard nosed and drearily consistent aiming for an overall, epic scale wherein any defects are lost on the grand macro-scale but apparent on the micro level (at which point any sense of the artwork as an whole is lost in any event.

The surface and material I paint on is as significant also.

I spent another 3 hours today putting a second coat on - it's got lines again!

I think they're lap lines, where my bands overlapped.

What kind of finish is it?

Is it satin?

I bet it's satin.

It's matt.

I wonder, could there be a connection between the fact that this is the first paint job I've done that still looked shabby after the second coat, and that this is the first time I've painted a wall such a light colour.

Maybe the mushroom, cream and magnolia shades I've previously applied with complete success, maybe their darker colour didn't show the bands so easily.

Are you painting on matt also?

I've examined another wall which has the same paint on it as the stuff I painted over, and it appears to be matt.

Further facts: the wall I painted is actually 3 sections of wall separated by the sides of a fireplace, so I had the opportunity with the second coat of trying 2 different painting methods.

One section I painted in horizontal bands, as recommended for emulsion by a lot of websites, and the others I painted in vertical bands, as I prefer to do.

The horizontally painted one has horizontal streaks, and the vertically painted one, vertical streaks.

I'm going to give it a third coat on Friday, and that will have to do. At least it will look like it's been painted recently, that's the main thing.

I feel certain that a third coat will resolve all of the alarming streakiness.