It's far easier to do it before...

Before is better but not always possible. BTW, try a bowl of coffee beans in the room to absorb the fresh paint smell when you're done! Works like a charm.

I wish I had paid a contractor to come in and paint all our ceilings before we moved in. You might do that, and possibly include the darker two rooms (blue and green) because then painting over will be really easy if you get the shade of white wrong the first time out.

Do it before. If you wait, you'll put it off, and the longer you put it off, the more complicated the job will be. Whites are fairly safe, and if you really make a mistake in one room, you can fix that one area later. I regret not painting my place before I moved in, and now four years later, it still hasn't happened.

You could do the opposite of what is there now - white on the bottom, and a splash of colour above the plate rail. I saw that on Sarah 101 last night, and it looked amazing!

Definitely before if you know what colors you want to use. I painted about half of my place before I moved in and it was great. The remaining rooms have been a pain, but I needed the time to figure out what colors we wanted.

Disclaimer: I swear I'm not trying to be rude...

Why not paint it yourself? Painting is one of the few home improvements that literally anyone can do. You can take your time, do one room at a time, change your mind if you don't like the colors. You don't have to work around someone else's schedule, or they around yours. Seems like a no-brainer for the situation you're in.

We just picked one basic neutral & painted every ceiling & wall before moving our furniture in the room..now we are just living with every room the same color so we can feel out the space & decorate from here. It got rid of the hideous colors on the walls so we didn't have to live with them AND it gave us time to decide what we really want for the long(er/ish) run.

I vote before..less hassle and the space will be on its way to becoming " your own" immediately vs. a bumpy back and forth while you are trying to sort through boxes and furniture. Once you get the keys you can always go in for an hour or two and do swatches in each of the rooms too before the contractor gets in there.

Paint before. Even if you need to change the color in one room, you won't regret it.

Do it before! Just gather all of the paint chips that you like and see how they look with your most important items (linens, furniture, rugs) in as many different types of light as possible (natural, fluorescent, incandescent, and don't forget dim light).

Definitely do it before. I've done both and painting before alleviates so many problems. You already have a rough idea of the colours you want and most home improvement stores are open late. I also vote for doing it yourself.

before, before, before! I had always thought painting after the move would be best...but it was so difficult to paint AROUND my belongings. more often than not, I never even got around to painting because it seemed like too much of a hassle.

With my recent move in January, I made record time with family and friends painting my 800+ sq ft apt (2 bedroom) in 2 days. We literally painted every wall in every room (1 accent wall, the rest of the walls are Silver Fox by Benjamin Moore). It was SO WORTH IT to take the time prior to the move. I highly recommend it!

Paint before.
I painted my 1100+ sq. ft. condo with a help of a friend all the same mint green. It wasn't easy because the living room has a slope ceiling and it's probably 20 feet at the highest point but I saved $1500.00 - $1700.00. Took my friend out to a super nice dinner. Offered to take him to Vegas but he refused.
I agree w/another post that suggested painting everything white except the small spaces by the ceiling.
If you wait until you move in, the painting company will CHARGE you to move your furniture. That is the quote I got anyway-I'm in California. Plus, you take the chance of something getting broken and sadly possibly something being taken.
Best of luck to you. BTW-NICE SPACE. (Oh, and I do like the current colors) :o)

Before :) Also, if you have the option, use VOC-free (or low-voc) paint to avoid the odor of freshly-painted walls.

If you can possibly do it before, that's really the best way to go. I've done it both before and after, and painting before you move in is way easier.

Before since you won't have any furniture to work around or have to move out of the way.

Ah, there's pros and cons to both. Paint before, and you fore go the hassle, including moving all your furniture. Paint after move in and you'll have a better sense how you'll live in the space, and the light quality throughout the day.

I recently bought a house, and we've been painting ourselves, room by room, it allows us to be more thoughtful in our color choices, but it does place havoc on day-to day living. If I'd do it again I'd paint the whole house a generic clean off-white, and then paint myself later with more interesting colors as I became inspired.

Ah, use low VOC paint. I personally love the BM Natura line, but it seems like every major paint brand has their own line. Coffee grinds will only cover the smell, and will not absorb headache inducing VOCs.

Super cute Condo! I'd be so excited if I were you.

BEFORE!!!!

Paint before, but be prepared to have to touch up a few areas. I was able to have my contractor paint prior to moving in. However, while moving in furniture, appliances, etc, there were areas that got scratched up. Mainly in the entryway, where for some reason, movers & furniture companies just aren't careful.

Congratulations!!! I'm closing in a couple of weeks and it's an exciting feeling! I say paint it before, and give a shot at painting it yourself. It'll be less of a hassle to move and cover furnitre. Also, with the money you save by doing it yoursefl, you can use to invest in other areas that you will want to redesign or refresh to reflect your style. Good luck with it all!!

Choose a neutral before you move and give the whole place a coat includes baseboards, ceilings, closets, etc. The non-wall areas are the part that look oldest and grubbiest.

Have it painted all white before you move in. If you decide to change it up after you've lived there awhile, it will be easy to paint a room or two on your own. The trim and ceiling are the hardest, messiest parts and you won't have to do either of those, so painting will be a snap!

do it before. i wanted to paint my place before i moved in but that didnt happen. now a year later its only about half painted, but im doing it myself...

Before, before, before. After you move in, you will desperately want order -- and so you'll want to get things settled without the hassle of painting once you've moved in -- and then you look up and it's six years later or something.

You say you have a week and a half -- arrange for the painting to take place about four days or so before you move in. That would give you time to get samples at your local paint store, put them up and take a look. Yes, it means making some decisions in a hurry, but you can really obsess too much about these things.

(One tip that helped me narrow down paint choices quickly when I recently painted a few rooms: I'd see a shade I liked on the Benjamin Moore gallery, and then in google images, I'd type in "Room Benjamin Moore Color Name." This would usually bring up a couple dozen rooms from various magazines and blogs, all painted in that color, While there was some variance due to lighting, monitor settings, etc., seeing several rooms together could give you a good general sense of how light, dark, warm, cool, etc. a color was. That meant I only had to check a couple different shades on the walls themselves.)

And yes, ABSOLUTELY get the ceilings repainted before you move in! You will never regret that.

I would do it partially before - hire a contractor to prep (fix nail pops, holes, dents, etc.) and properly prime everything, and also paint the ceilings because you can safely choose that color ahead of time. Then you'll be left with a ready-to-go blank slate to choose the colors when you are living there and just do the painting of the walls yourself. I wish I had done this.

More pressing, in my opinion...the floors. Now is the time to do anything you might wish to (or need to) do with the floors. It is nightmarish to live through refinishing or even re-polyurethaning with all your furniture piled-up elsewhere for days. Painting after moving in is an annoyance--but working on the floors--much trickier.

We just purchased a home and had 2 weeks before our lease ended to tackle all the painting, and I do not regret it one bit! Moving is stressful enough as-is, and this is the only time you will have big empty rooms to paint quickly. I got large pieces of white foam core and painted my samples (buy the actual samples you can paint) on the boards. I brought the boards over before we closed - once during the day and once at night, so I could pick the color quickly. This allowed me to take the samples from room to room. Best of luck and congratulations on your new home!

Before - for every reason some mentioned above !

Before! I had the foresight to camp out in our house for three weeks before moving in & paint, when we bought it 11 years ago, especially getting the huge kitchen/family room painted, and did four very vibrant colors. I hauled a futon & bedding over, plopped down in the master BR, and every night after work I came to the new place and painted till midnight. I got so much done, and it was fun. We still love the kitchen colors, luckily.

I am so glad I got the kitchen done! We use it constantly, and with two kids, closing it up for a week to paint would have been impossible. Now that the kids are grown & gone, we JUST got around to repainting the living room, and cleaning the carpets. (And tonight we move in the sexy red leather sofa I always wanted but would not get until After Kids!)

Once you're in a space, unless you can do without that space for a week or more, get it done before.

Absolutely, before. When I bought my first house and the people moved out without cleaning it thoroughly, it was SO depressing to come over the first time, because then all you saw were icky, dirty walls no longer covered/disguised by furnishings. Even if you decide to change later, it'll be worth it. That was 14 years ago and I still remember how hard that depression hit me. I went back to stay in my empty apartment (which WAS thoroughly cleaned, thank you very much) and paid a laborer-guy to at least paint the bedrooms, it was that hard to be here.

Also, if you paint before, it'll be so much easier to do it yourself without having to move a bunch of stuff. OR, you could do the contractor thing, let him do all the prep (wall repair, etc) and then if you repaint, the task will already be a lot easier.

If you are doing ceilings, I would have those done before. For the walls, after. Even with a white, there are undertones to consider and the light coming in the windows can vary so much from room to room.

When we bought our house, it was empty and had just been painted in yellows and golds. It looked very pretty--until we moved in our furniture. I ended up repainting everything. The funny thing is, we still have a lot of yellows, it's just that the particular yellows they used looked drab and icky with our stuff.

Sure, it's a bit of a hassle to move around furniture, but I think t's worth it if it means you'll be happier in the long term with the color you choose. Some people are less sensitive to colors than others though, and it would be less of an issue for them if the color were a bit off.

We closed on our place on the 9th of the month and had until the end of the month to vacate the old place. It took just about every one of those 22 days to paint every wall and ceiling in the new place (it needed it, badly), thoroughly clean the old dump and move our stuff.

Even though we've since changed the colors in one bedroom and on two walls of the living room, I'm glad we painted before settling in. There's nothing like fresh paint to make a place feel fresh and clean, and it's a heckuva lot easier to start the job with an empty space.

Like others here, I've never once hired a painting contractor. Can't say that I enjoy painting, but it's one of the few home-improvement projects I'm confident I can execute at least passably. This is not to say that a professional wouldn't do a better job, of course, but I do fine, what with all the practice I've had over the decades.

Before.

Before! I have learned many lessons from our last move and this is one of them. We had to move into our house right after closing, so painting before was out of the question. Now almost 2 years later we are slowly painting each room. Working around furniture, busy schedules and kids hasn't helped the process. Even if you decide to change a room after you move in, repainting one room is better than painting all of them.

Paint before. And hire the painter. (And refinish your floors if needed.)

I wouldn't have said that a few years ago - I was pro-DIY painting over time. But, I was convinced to get the house painted in the short window between closing and move-in and I it was money well spent.

Here's what I did: I lined/scheduled the contractor in advance. They don't need to know your paint color until the day they start painting. So, on closing day, I went over to the empty house with some paint samples. I painted them on the walls and looked at it in different lights that day and the next. I'm happy with all of my choices that day. There's one room I'd like to repaint now, but I'm so glad I'll be painting over the light color I chose instead of the previous owner's dark color.

Call me nuts, but we decided to paint after. I could not settle on a color before, and I realized it's because I didn't know what the colors would look like until I'd lived in the place and seen the light on the walls, etc. So we just moved in, and this weekend will be about putting swatches up on the walls. We will paint ourselves, but we've paid painters in the past and they're totally used to working around your stuff. They have lots of tarps and drop cloths.

Before! We had two weeks between closing on our first house and vacating our rental home. I was able to scatter paint chips in each room for a few days to see how the light changed from day to day, and that made the color picking process easier (I already had an idea of what colors I wanted). Then I would spend at least a few hours a day washing walls, spackling, and painting walls and ceilings. I did 90% of it myself. I ran out of time at the end, so I never got around to painting the kitchen ceiling (it's already white and doesn't really need it too badly). We moved in shortly after, and it took a good year to unpack, decorate, and organize, especially with my special-needs toddler taking up most of my free time. I'm still working on organizing the basement, and it's been a year and a half since we've moved. All I can say is there'd be no way I could find the time (nor energy) to do all that painting now, especially with a new baby on the way.

I'm going to add -- yeah, painting it yourself is great IF you have the time. From the sound of things, you don't! If you can afford it, hire that painter without guilt. You will have plenty of DIY opportunities as a homeowner. Choose your battles. :D

we painted after. going room by room and updating fixtures/accents at the same time. I've been really happy with our method. The paint I would have picked initially would not have been my style after living in the home for a while.

There's not that much risk in going with "before" if you're going with whites. How wrong could your choices turn out to be? If that's your palette, you're the ideal candidate for a "before" scenario.

BarbieQ is a genius, though, for pointing out the real opportunity of making any fixes to the floors.

We're in the same position and we're painting before we move because it'll be so much cheaper. It's going to be really hard to paint everything but we'll get it done!

Definitely do it before, especially if you're just doing various shades of white. It's hard to go wrong with white.

We painted the walls and ceilings of our living/dining room before we moved in, and then decided to do the trim afterward. Trust me, having left over projects has just meant living in a space that didn't feel 'done' for a long time because it's such a big hassle to paint after you've loaded in your furniture. I wish we had done all of the trim before we moved in, because we're STILL not finished and I'm close to painters-burnout. I'm tired of my weekends being eaten up with yet another messy paint job! Gah.

Definitely, paint before moving in. Before, before, before.

Congratulations on the condo! I would paint before and hire painters. Sounds like you will be plenty busy during that time anyway. We had pros do our house before we moved in and they did a much better job than we ever could have done and it was so worth it.
I am still afraid to hang anything on the walls for fear of putting it in the wrong spot and having holes in my perfect walls though ;-)

Hm, I guess I've lived in much smaller spaces, but the most time-consuming part of painting for me was the taping and the edging, which I usually do the night before painting. Once that's done it's butter all the way through and typically it takes 30 min per wall, afternoon per room.

As for furniture, I've never had to move anything more than 2 ft away from the wall, so it's not like you're hauling out rooms of furniture.

Then again I love painting but I can see how some may not want to deal with the hassle. I think I've painted and repainted my livingroom at least 3x in the short time I've lived here.

Before. Absolutely.

I agree about the floors, though. If they need it, do that as a first priority even if it means painting later.

If you decide to paint it yourself ,paint as much as possible before...starting with the inside of closets and cupboards. This will give you areas to practice your technique and it's definitely beneficail to have them done before you move in...everything that needs to can go right in the when they arrive. Use an eggshell or semi gloss since these areas have a tendency to get banged up. Next do the ceilings. Do the walls last...if you run out of time or aren't sure about the color it's not so difficult to push furniture away from the walls and paint them.

Enjoy your new home!!!

I really want to second home body's comment. It seems a very good best of both world's idea.
Prepping a home for painting is time consuming, as well a a skill that should not be undervalued, especially if you have plaster instead of drywall (not sure in your case), and ceiling's are also a fair bit of effort and easy to chose the color for. A good prep job, especially if you are doing any wood work, really makes a difference in the quality of the job. You could then decide whether to paint yourself or hire our the walls when the time comes.
I also want to second the no/low VOC paint. I have painted a lot in low VOC paint, and then painted a room recently with regular paint ( i just forgot to oder the no VOC) the off gasing from the regular paint was noticible for several weeks, vs. a day or two for low VOC.

Before. I did that when I bought my place. Painted it myself and went every night after work to get it done before I moved; I recently repainted a bedroom and moving everything around was a major pain. I also echo the comments about doing the floor before you move in and if you have to choose between the two - definitely do the floor.

@Him - San Diego - Good idea!! i hadn't even thought about practicing on closets. I'm a very inexperienced painter but I'm going to paint a whole house because I keep getting quotes that are outrageously out of my budget. And if I'm going to start skimping on quality, I might as well not have to pay for it and do it myself.

I used to work as a painter for my college housing office, which meant I had to go into the recently emptied dorms and paint everything. It took ages because I had to move furniture, avoid splashing pant on things, etc. Definitely paint before if you can.

I also suggest painting it yourself. It's really not hard once you get the hang of it. Cut in carefully and once that's done you can roll the walls and everything else pretty quickly. Make sure you patch over any imperfections before painting so they won't be seen under the paint.

Oh, and I never bothered with taping because it took too much time. Instead I just used a piece of plastic (there's guides you can buy at home improvement stores but I just used an old piece of broken vinyl siding), placed it flush against what I didn't want to get paint on (ie, a window sill or baseboards), painted up flush to it and moved on to the next area.

I could generally paint an apartment (2 bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and living room) in about 2 days using that method and I never had an issue with the quality of work.

Personally, I would suggest painting afterwards, mostly because you were not 100% sure about the choice of your colours.
I paint myself (often!) and I am pretty good about not making mess so I don't bother putting any dropcloth etc. on the floor. I do tape though because I am anal about crisp lines.
I just move stuff away from the walls (i.e. enough to have space for a step stool and the paint tray. If there is any splatter I wipe it as I go.

This is a weird comment but I recently was condo-hunting in logan sq too and I looked at that place! (swear it's the same one) It's beautiful, congrats. I'd paint afterward, worth it in my opinion. get a feel for the space and so on.

Before! Absolutely. I'm glad I got it done before I moved in. I still have to paint the side boards and it's been two months since I moved. Right now I'm working on the doors. If you can afford a contractor then go you. I wish I did, but I had to work on the house everyday after work. I gladly did of course with the help of my boyfriend and our friends. Whites are the safest colors and it's also the easiest to paint over if you change your mind. You'll have plenty of other things to do once you're settled in. Like getting ready for your housewarming. Congrats.

Hi,
Before,as you will save extra hessel ,and shift once everything is completed ,by the way
i know Exterior House Painters,they are economical.
Congratulate,moving new home
Thanks

logan sq! I knew when I saw that first pic with the window above the bed that this had to be in Chicago, and I haven't lived there in many decades.

Before. I did, all in an off-white, and it was great. You CAN tell from swatches, painting patches, or boards - it doesn't take long to tell which looks best in the light of the place - it is actually easier to tell when there is not stuff in the place yet. (And this is from somebody who takes forever to decide, who figured I'd later paint it various colors after I had furniture and rugs in place, but never could decide, so never re-painted.) But picking that first off-white - easy - taped up a bunch of little swatches (really many), and it was obvious fairly quickly. It is all about the light.

It is a bit stressful having the painter do it while you are prepping to move it, so it isn't stress free, but best to get it done now.

As for me I will go for "before you move-in" to prevent any sort of hassle. You can also try Denver painting contractor to make sure that everything will be done at the right time. If you do it yourself, there is a possibility that you will end up being rushed and will not get the look that you really want.

It is good if you paint it before moving there. you can paint it yourself or can contact painting contractor. If you are confused in color then you can see color chart or can be use basic color. Paint it one room to second room it will save your time as well as it will help to choose more color.