Paint rollers

NOVQO rollers for applying filler

A roller applies filler, it does not level it. The compound spreads across the plane faster and more evenly than with a spatula, and only then is it drawn out and trued with a wide blade. Splitting those two operations is where the time is won on large walls and ceilings.

Width

Narrow rollers (100–230 mm) work where a wide one cannot go: strips between openings, areas behind pipes, corners, plasterboard joints. Wide ones (305–455 mm) take the bulk of the work: the wider the roller, the fewer passes and the more even the base coat.

What a wide roller demands

Even pressure along its whole length. Press with one edge and the layer comes out wedge-shaped, adding work to the spatula pass that follows. In a room with openings and recesses the widest size often hinders more than it helps.

The pile

Polyamide resists abrasion and does not go soggy in a wet mix. A longer pile picks up more material and carries it into the hollows of an uneven substrate, but leaves a thicker layer — a spatula pass after it is mandatory.