Free Expert Advice For The Home DIYer

For the DIY decorator, YouTube is a treasure trove of riches. It’s full of step-by-step video tutorials on everything from exterior house painting and creating faux finishes to hanging wallpaper and refinishing wood floors. Some of the most useful videos come from manufacturers of decorating products and the professional contractors who install them. And the site is rapidly expanding, with approximately 300 hours of video uploaded every minute. Chances are good that YouTube has a video for whatever skill or technique you want to learn. Here are just three examples.

1. Coating:

How do you paint concrete? Revitalize a wood deck? Expertly paint a ceiling? Choose the latest trending colors? These YouTube tutorials and so many more are available from such paint manufacturers as Benjamin Moore, Pittsburgh Paints, and Olympic Paints & Stains. Typically these videos show the paints used to produce the finish, as well as the items needed to apply them. One example is Olympic’s “How to Strip Old Wood or Deck Stain or Paint,” which has had more than 700,000 views. Other examples are Benjamin Moore’s “How to Apply Notable Dry Erase Paint,” which includes surface preparation tips; and “How to Paint a Door Right,” which is one of the company’s most popular tutorials. On the faux finishing side, manufacturers such as Crescent Bronze, Modern Masters, and Valspar offer lots of videos, on topics from the use of reactive metallic paints to rag-rolling to creating various patinas. If there’s a particular technique you’d like to try—or a certain product from a particular manufacturer—simply do YouTube search, cue up the video you need, and start taking notes! It’s worth noting that some of the most popular videos in the painting category come from painters themselves—some of whom have become YouTube celebrities. Chris Berry, also known as The Idaho Painter, has produced a plethora of painting videos for DIYers.  Berry’s YouTube channel has become one of the most popular and fastest-growing in the DIY painting category, with more than 91,000 subscribers and hundreds of thousands of views. His virtual library of painting videos includes “Masking Before Painting,” “How to Roll Walls,” and “Interior Trim Painting Hacks.” Some of his videos, such as “Cabinet Painting Tips,” are presented in well-publicized live streams.

2. Paper Hanging:

Want to learn how to hang wallpaper? YouTube’s got you covered there as well. Major wallpaper manufacturers, such as like York Wallcoverings and Brewster Home Fashions, give consumers step-by-step instructions on how to hang the newer non-woven wallpapers. York shows how its Sure Strip non-woven product, with easy-to-hang/easy-to-remove adhesive technology, can be installed with the use of just a few simple tools and supplies. Brewster, meanwhile, demonstrates the “paste the wall” method as an easy, mess-free way to apply its non-woven, non-pasted product. Watching these videos can help consumers get over their fear of paperhanging—and subsequent worries about product removal—that might otherwise make them hesitate to use such products.

3. Decorative Flooring:

Another skill that consumers can learn through YouTube is creating gorgeous concrete floors. For instance, SkimStone has teamed up with Royal Design Studio to produce a series of videos in which the end result is a beautiful patterned floor. The effect is achieved with the SkimStone decorative flooring system in conjunction with Royal Design’s Modello Designs Decorative Masking Patterns. Using these videos can help DIY consumers achieve decorative floor treatments ranging from subtle to dramatic.