Whether you’ve casually thought about painting a car in your garage or you’re ready to gather the necessary supplies and lay down some color, keeping yourself safe is essential. Here’s the good news: with as rich a history as automotive painting claims, you can easily learn from the mistakes of others without having to deal with the consequences.
In the interest of your safety and fueling your passion for automotive painting, we’ve compiled a list of the most vital garage car painting safety tips you need to know. Review these before you put anything in motion to ensure you’re as prepared for personal safety as you are for nailing those car painting techniques. Here at Colors Edge, we specialize in personal protective equipment (PPE), the first and last line of defense against the harmful chemicals found in today’s automotive-grade paint and related products.
Is it safe to paint a car in your garage?
Yes, it’s safe to paint a car in your garage, provided you ensure proper ventilation, wear PPE, remove any slip hazards, and potentially have someone supervise you in case of emergency. Within a professional setting, almost every paint booth must meet rigorous safety standards, and painters must follow strict protocols to ensure their personal safety. Similar environmental factors exist in your garage, making it vital to your health to follow the same safety procedures.
Critical garage car painting safety tips to protect your health
Each of the garage car painting safety tips below revolves around the idea of recognizing and understanding what you’re getting into before you’ve painted yourself into a corner, so to speak. In short, the knowledge you gain by reading this article can help safeguard you against personal injury. Just like with the best paint jobs, there’s no cutting corners when it comes to protecting your well-being.
Review the product MSDS information
Almost every automotive painting chemical product comes with a material safety data sheet (MSDS). On this sheet, you’ll find a description of how to use the chemical safely, what potential hazards exist, and how to respond in an emergency. Although you can use these sheets simply to help inform your painting process (like average flash times, best temperatures for spraying, and how to clean it from your spray gun), they’re worth reading to protect your personal safety.
The toxins found in automotive paint are typically referred to as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). For example, most automotive paints contain isocyanate, which is an odorless and tasteless chemical harmful to humans. These paints are also typically flammable, so it’s a good idea to have a fire extinguisher nearby, just in case.
Ensure sufficient ventilation
You cannot safely paint a car in your garage without ensuring proper ventilation. We’ll talk more about purifying the air you breathe in the next section, but within your painting space, exhaust fans are a must. These fans circulate fresh air throughout your garage and redirect chemical-laden air outside, where it’s diluted into the atmosphere.
Your number one priority should be ensuring adequate ventilation to keep the air within your garage fresh. However, it’s also a good idea to test-run the exhaust fans to see what kind of dust they stir up and which direction you can face them to optimize air flow. It’s much easier to fix any issues that arise before you’re suited up and the car’s prepped for paint.
Invest in quality personal protective equipment
Personal protective equipment (commonly referred to as PPE) used in automotive painting includes:
- A full-body paint suit
- Safety glasses
- Gloves
- A respirator
- Ear protection
- Appropriate footwear
Painters use full paint suits to prevent any chemicals from contacting their skin and absorbing into their bodies. Plus, it means you’re not ruining your favorite T-shirt or bringing any contaminants from it into the paint area. Some automotive painters opt to wear a head sock, too, which can help protect your head if your paint suit doesn’t include a hood.
In addition to minimizing the amount of sweat, hair, and skin cells that enter the air with a full suit, painters often wear safety glasses and closed-toe shoes. Again, this gear protects your body from interacting with overspray and chemicals like solvents. Closed-toe shoes are also a good choice in the off chance certain car parts (like the door or bumpers) fall off their stands and contact your feet.
You should always use chemical-resistant gloves when painting. The most popular are nitrile gloves, including those that we carry here at Colors Edge. Latex gloves don’t stand up to harsh chemicals well, in the same way your eardrums won’t stand up to loud air compressors and body work tools like grinders and sanders if you don’t also wear ear protection.
Last but certainly not least are respirators. Painting a car in your garage without one is foolish and puts your health at incredible risk. However, just putting one on isn’t enough.
Respirators typically contain two filters that purify the air you breathe, but those filters wear out over time. In fact, it’s a good idea to replace the filters—which are sometimes referred to as cartridges, depending on the respirator design—every time you paint. If you smell an unpleasant odor or experience an unappetizing taste, exit the garage, change your filters, and go back to investigate whether the smell persists.
Wear PPE before and after painting
Don your PPE before you start painting and keep it on through clean-up. Step into the garage with everything already on as you prep to paint. This minimizes contaminants from settling onto surfaces and adding to what’s already there.
As you clean out the spray gun, remember to be thorough but keep the air passages free from solvents. Continue to wear nitrile gloves, safety glasses, your paint suit, and a respirator. Only when you’re finished should you remove your protective gear.
Install adequate lighting
Add artificial light to your garage, not only for your personal safety but also to see clearly what you’re painting and, more specifically, what kind of coverage you achieve as you spray. Overhead lighting is a must. You should also add lights to the walls for the side panels, and even one or two on the ground to illuminate the lower half of the car.
Depending on the type of lighting you invest in, you might also want to cover them with plastic to prevent overspray from landing on the bulbs or housing. It’s also much easier to keep the lights clean if you can remove and replace a layer of plastic, rather than scrub the entire assembly to remove potential contaminants.
Prepare your garage floor
While much of keeping your garage clean to ensure a blemish-free paint job requires paying attention to the air, it’s often your garage floor—or rather, the dirt and debris on top of it—that can cause problems. Lay down a tarp as a protective layer, or saturate the floor with water to keep the dust down. It’s best to do this prep before you even wheel the car into your garage to minimize dust settling on the panels.
In addition to preparing the garage floor before you paint, it’s vital to keep it clean while you’re laying down color. If you happen to spill anything, clean it up immediately to prevent slipping. If you used old rags to soak up solvent, dispose of them properly to avoid additional hazards.
Recruit a painting buddy
It’s entirely possible to paint a car in your garage yourself without issue, but having two sets of eyes instead of one can increase the safety factor exponentially. On a basic level, they can help you handle chemicals and maneuver the air hose as you move about the car to ensure it doesn’t contact the fresh paint. Should any worst-case scenarios happen, they can call for help and at least try to get you to safety.
Prioritize your health over a perfect paint job
Many of the best automotive painters started out experimenting in their own garages and learning from their mistakes along the way. But there’s one mistake you can’t make more than once: failing to ensure your health comes first, even if it means scrapping what you’ve already sprayed. Protect yourself any time you paint in your garage so you can enjoy the results of your hard work for years and years to come.
Still unsure what you might need to help your first paint job go off without a hitch? Call 336-378-7872 with your garage car painting questions, or contact us online for more detailed inquiries.
