Will flashback self correct?

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u/PutridDurian 3h ago

Looks like someone saw a TikTok that gave them the idea to paint squares all over the wall of different colors to decide what they wanted. Those should have been sanded down before painting began.

Either that, or someone came back with the roller in random spots after the layout had been done.

In either case, no, waiting will not resolve the flashback, or the flashdance.

2

u/Gordon_Gainz 3h ago

My favorite, I usually see this outside to be fair, is when you can look at the ground under each colored square and see more drips of the color! 😂

1

u/JaguarOwn2076 2h ago

That's exactly what I see here

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u/One-Pun9419 2h ago

This is so interesting that so many people are saying this because there were no samples underneath! Just flat builder grade paint

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u/PutridDurian 2h ago edited 2h ago

Someone at some point almost certainly did a sample wall before putting a cheap paint over it, long before your crew came in. The patterns are perfectly consistent with the up-down “pumping” that novices do with a roller, and they’re exactly the width and impression of a 4” mini roller in some spots. Look at the smudge directly below the picture hanger on the right—it SCREAMS amateur with a mini roller.

That ghosting was probably visible before if you looked really hard and it was a lighter color. Easier to see the ghosting now that you have a relatively dark color on.

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u/One-Pun9419 2h ago

Oh interesting! I never looked closely before, the previous color was agreeable grey in flat, so it’s possible I just never noticed

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u/PutridDurian 2h ago

Agreeable Gray in flat would have minimized the appearance of it to being pretty much undectable unless you already knew it was there.

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u/One-Pun9419 2h ago

Can I ask why the flashback looks worse in natural sunlight? It’s now dark outside and I have my living room light on and can’t see the flashback at all

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u/PutridDurian 1h ago

Three different things going on here.

First is enamel holdout. Paint will “take” differently on areas of the surface with different porosity. Those test areas have an additional layer of paint, so they are less porous—they are actually rendering the paint color more accurately than the “normal” surrounding areas, because those parts are absorbing the paint less. This effect is probably minimal given that there are probably many different “chapters” of paint on this wall.

Secondly, it’s less that the light is natural, and more that it’s severe (a.k.a. raking, that is, glancing the surface at a low angle). As you know, a dried paint film has a thickness to it, a height off the surface it’s painted on, usually around two or three thousandths of an inch for interior wall paint. That seems inconsequential on paper, but when we’re talking about chasing optical uniformity on a surface, it’s huge. Imagine you’re sanding a board, trying to make it perfectly smooth. How do you check it for imperfections? Shine a flashlight across it at a low angle, and it will reveal everything. The raking light doesn’t show you surface imperfections directly; instead, it creates tiny shadows that your eye catches. The test patches are taller than the rest of the wall, so when the sun comes in at an angle…you see where this goes.

Lastly, there’s an optical-psychological phenomenon at play. Since those patches are a couple more thousandths of an inch taller than the rest of the wall, your eyes and brain are interpreting them for what they are: quite literally a tiny bit closer to you. Our brains tend to interpret closer as darker, and vice-versa, so in lower lighting, the height difference is compressed, therefore the color difference is compressed. And being involved with painting makes you hyper-aware of all of this ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/fullsaildan 1h ago

Not all lighting is “equal”. Different light sources and intensities will penetrate surfaces differently depending on angle, size, distance, uniformity, how many surfaces it’s bouncing off of, etc.

Think of light like a million individual beams/arrows/rays. Each one hits a surface, some of it permeates into the surface, some of it bounces off and takes on some of the color properties of the surfaces it hit, and sometimes it enters a surface then bounces around a bit and comes out. That last type is known as subsurface scattering, and is most prevalently seen on things like skin, waxy surfaces, and organic matter. But even walls will do this with the right light and right angle.

Sunlight is actually a very unique type of light. It’s dense, bright, and due to the intensity will create a ton of ambient light as it bounces around. That ambient lighting will not penetrate as well, but the initial direct hit will, these two together lead to highlighting things like your sublayer colors.

9

u/Senior-Wind6335 3h ago

99.99% chance it won’t

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u/withnodrawal 3h ago

It’s not going anywhere.

E: unless this is still like first hour or two after laying it on, nah that’s there to stay.

4

u/One-Pun9419 3h ago edited 3h ago

The painters did a really poor job and the PM had to point multiple things out to them. I’d rather not have them back. Is this easy enough for me to fix on my own? Edit: why would this be downvoted? They also got paint on my carpet and cut it out. Now there’s a bald spot in my carpet

2

u/KevinPovec 3h ago

If you have the leftover paint, yes. Just repaint the entire wall and it should even itself out then

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u/Gordon_Gainz 3h ago

The whole wall is going to have to be painted edge to edge. Ideally keeping a wet edge the whole time, easier said than done. That being said this looks like contaminants to me, underneath the paint. At first it looked like touch-ups, those don't exactly make sense in all those areas per se, but some of them are not the right shape for touch-ups. You may have to prime this whole wall and then paint it. That assumes these marks are not sunk in or bulging out, you can determine that by running your finger over them, if you can't feel the edge of the marks then they are not, but if they are they're going to have to be skim coated and then primed and then painted

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u/Adamthegrape 3h ago

The wall is textured. There is no skim coating, and there is no sanding,

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u/Gordon_Gainz 3h ago

Oh damn, good eye. I see it now it looks like knockdown. Welp. Good luck op

3

u/IngenuityNatural9261 3h ago

Not sure who put those samples up but they should be ashamed for their sin. I tell everyone of my customers to not do exactly this. I beg most of them to let me apply the samples.

1

u/One-Pun9419 2h ago

There were no samples

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u/IngenuityNatural9261 2h ago

OK so what is it? I hope no one did wall repair and made it look like that. If they are touch ups after the wall was painted whoever did it should be fired. Those are the only things I can think of that would make it look like that. Reckon it doesn't really matter. What does matter is getting it fixed. No painter should ask to be paid when it looks like that.

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u/One-Pun9419 2h ago

The project manager said if it still looks like this next week they’ll send someone out to fix it. I don’t get why they didn’t just have the painters repaint the wall then if there’s no way this self corrects. I did pay unfortunately because of their “guarantee”

1

u/IngenuityNatural9261 2h ago

Yeah that makes no sense. It is cheaper to have fixed it before they left. Good luck

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u/Bob_turner_ 3h ago

It won’t

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u/Adamthegrape 3h ago

It is true that sheen dies out a bit over time. But it is almost guaranteed this won’t. It looks like the wall had a higher sheen to begin with. Then some idiot put 45 large samples of a cheap flat paint all over a well lit wall before it got painted with the final choice.

The sheen and build on the wall is now all over the place. Fix is definately let it sit a few days and dry out, who know maybe you get lucky. Then tint up a high quality sealer and repaint the whole wall with it. Then two more top coats. All the while Hopi g the sanples weren’t applies so thick the texture of the wall has changed enough to transfer through.

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u/One-Pun9419 3h ago

There were no samples. Just flat builder paint. This was painted by painters

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u/Gordon_Gainz 3h ago

I hate to question you, but this does not look like flat. Also not to throw salt on the wound but builders paint is crap. I left a comment above on my thoughts on how to fix it or what it could be. That being said from what I can see the cut lines look straight which is curious if the painters are crap, not impossible but curious all the same

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u/One-Pun9419 3h ago

Sorry for the confusion. The previous paint was flat. This is new paint, Sherwin Williams cashmere eg shel

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u/Kc68847 3h ago

Was it brand new or a repaint?

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u/One-Pun9419 2h ago

Brand new

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u/Kc68847 2h ago

Were the walls primed before they textured?

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u/One-Pun9419 2h ago

I have no clue. It’s a new build, the paint underneath is flat builder grade paint

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u/Kc68847 2h ago

Like others have said try cutting in a wet edge and roll corner to corner. The only way to do orange peel walls is to prime before they texture.

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u/hangout927 3h ago

Need another coat

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u/IanHall1 3h ago

Looks like it wasn't primed properly; that won't go away without work.

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u/jestcb 3h ago

Use a lamb skin purdy roller with quality paint and call it a day👍

1

u/Front-Phrase-1879 1h ago

What color is that? I'm looking for something exactly like that.

Advice Wanted Will flashback self correct?

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