Painting Plaster Walls, ceilings ...

[ho'ard]

Light to dark, three coats, dark to light, 2 coats with a little luck.
Plaster tends to be full of little imperfections and thus can be somewhat more forgiving to the eye than drywall in terms of patches, cracks and repairs.

[Kraniac]

Depending on the existing color vs. new color, two coats should be fine.

If you aren't patching lots of huge areas then you can spot prime with a tinted primer, It should work fine. Lots of huge areas to patch..you might as well do a complete prime job



What type of paint is on the walls right now? flat, egg, gloss?..oil base or latex?

I used to be a loyal Benny Moore customer...not so much anymore. The newer Benny Moore latex paints dry way to quickly, as the years go by they seem to dry faster and faster...much faster than they used to and I hate that. Benny M swears they haven't changed their formulaton but they are fibbing..big time.

I've been using the Muralo Ultra Water Borne paints...EXCELLENT..great open time, excellent coverage, feathers well and rolls well and is a joy to use when cutting in trim.

As Muralo says...similar to using an oil based paint...not really, but leaps better than Benny Moore latex. Priced to compete with standard latex

[lafinfil]

Moore's paints have always been one of my favorites to paint with and is one of the few brands where the chips
are actually very accurate compared to the dry down color.

That said - as a former owner of a 1890 vintage house with lots of patched plaster (I got pretty good at that)
My favorite paint under those conditions was Devoe High Hiding paint. It is very thick and the
High Hiding version does a nice job of bridging repairs and filling imperfections.

I had never used Devoe until a painting contractor that specialized in old houses clued me in.

Painting with cheap paint is a waste of time and money IMHO

http://www.devoe.com/NUSDPP/home/index.jsp

[ho'ard]

I would add- I don't feel a primer coat is necessary, but it would only take a few minutes to slap a bit of Killz onto the small areas that are likey to show through, e.g. black scuffs, crayon or marker marks. Killz dries slowly though-- this may be something you want to do yourself a day or two ahead of the painter.