ᐅ Ceilings and walls finished to level 3 with or without painting fleece?

Hello forum community,

We have purchased a new condominium that will be ready for occupancy in 2022. According to the construction specification, the ceilings and walls will be finely plastered (skim coated) and painted white in the third quarter. The additional application of painter’s fleece is not included and costs an extra €6.50 per square meter (approximately $7 per square foot).

Is this investment worthwhile? If so, does it make sense to apply painter’s fleece to all rooms or only to the hallway and the living/kitchen/dining area?

Since this will add up to a noticeable amount and we have no experience in this area, we rely on your collective knowledge.

Thanks in advance.

What materials are the walls and ceilings made of? Are they the same everywhere?
If everything is concrete, you might be able to skip it. For a mix of concrete and drywall or porous clay blocks (Poroton), I would recommend installing a painter's fleece, although even that is not 100% guaranteed to help.

Tolentino schrieb:

What materials are the walls and ceilings made of? Are they the same everywhere?
If everything is concrete, it might be possible to skip it. With a mix of concrete and drywall or Poroton blocks, I would recommend installing painting fleece, although even that doesn’t guarantee 100% effectiveness.

The exterior walls are planned to be built with soundproof bricks, the load-bearing interior walls with concrete blocks, and the remaining partition walls framed using stud construction. Therefore, we were advised to apply painting fleece as well. To save costs, we are considering skipping it in the utility room and bedrooms. Does this make sense? Or should we bite the bullet and have it installed in the bedrooms as well? Or should we avoid it entirely because it might just be wasted money?
We really cannot assess this ourselves, as this is our first new build project. We don’t have any comparisons between Q2 and Q3 or with and without painting fleece. Are the differences significant or marginal? How might this affect minor hairline cracks over the coming years? As far as we understand, hairline cracks are common in most new buildings. That’s supposedly why painting fleece is used—to conceal them, at least that’s what we were told.

We did not use painting fleece. In two rooms, unfortunately, the transitions between drywall and calcium silicate brick are visible, but since these are in the dressing room and the office, it doesn’t bother us. All other rooms have calcium silicate brick on the inside and aerated concrete (Ytong) on the outside. After one year, we have almost no cracks, only at the window-to-wall junction. We don’t regret at all that we didn’t use painting fleece.

Especially with your material mix, I would recommend using painter’s fleece, but I’m not sure how tight your schedule is. Leaving the utility room unfinished is possible; some people don’t even paint it. However, if you decide to do it, I would suggest including the bedroom right away.

The question is: paint on plaster or paint on painter’s fleece. If you want to leave everything white, you can skip the painter’s fleece. But if you plan to repaint the walls or add color accents later, I would use painter’s fleece in those areas. Simply to avoid having to scrape off paint residues from the wall at some point in the future.

I would leave the ceilings with Q3 plaster finish. For the bedroom, living room, hallway, kitchen, and dining room, I would use painter’s fleece on the walls.

Regarding the cracks, you described it well. They can occur, but with fleece over them, they shouldn’t be visible.

I’m relieved that I no longer have to worry about these things^^ (We painted all walls and ceilings with Q2 + painter’s fleece + white silicate paint).