With interior home improvements on the rise, homeowners are looking for easy and efficient ways to enhance their interior design. One of the most important interior features to have is clean, finished-looking interior trim. There are many options to accomplish this, and it can be challenging to choose which will have a noticeable impact.

Whether you plan on selling your home or not, upgrading your home’s interior trim can noticeably affect the overall appearance. Read below to find out the benefits and drawbacks of painting vs. staining interior trim in your home.

Painting Versus Staining: Weighing the Pros on Cons

Many people believe that staining is the best choice for interior trim because it will last much longer than paint (8-10 years versus 5-7 years). However, many interior design trends are leaning more toward painted trim–especially basic white.

Wood Quality

The first thing you’ll need to consider is the quality of the wood. If your baseboards or trim boards are not high-quality wood, your options might be limited. If they are already painted, you’ll need to strip the paint before staining, which might be too much for the wood to handle.

Preparing to Sell

You’ll also want to think about the future of your home. If you’re planning on selling your home sometime in the future, you’ll want to choose an option that will last. Think about the trim in other rooms of your home: will they all need to be upgraded in a few years? Are some painted and others stained? You might need to update certain areas before selling.

Lighting Considerations

If your home (or the room in question) has plenty of windows with direct sunlight, it’s best to choose an option other than staining because light will fade the color noticeably. On the other hand, if you’ve already primed or sanded surfaces and the interior trim is a lighter color, staining might be your best bet because it will look as fresh as when you first applied it.

So, what are your interior trim painting and staining options? Painting is less expensive than staining, but it might not last as long. You’ll also need to prepare and prime before you paint for the best results, so it is not necessarily the least complicated option. Overall, you should consider hiring professionals to update your trim, because both options are time-consuming and much more troublesome than the average DIYer assumes it to be.

For more home improvement tips and tricks, check out the Minnesota Home Interiors Blog page.