Ceiling Stain

Few years ago, I got severe temporary water leakage in given spot of my ceiling. The leakage was due to a failure of an overflow washer pipe in the bathtub above. The leak was severe due to the volume of water that went down, but it was very much temporary.

At the end of the day, I got an unsightly stain on the ceiling. Once the stain had dried out, I deployed some primer stain blocker. Then, I took a sample of the ceiling's paint color to the local store to have them match it. Problem be that the match was never a good match after all. I got upset, and got beserk and to make matters worse I used other paint samples I had around in an attempt to match it; and at the end it got really ugly.

So, other than painting the whole ceiling what would be the best approach to this situation.

 

Ceilings are often painted with "ceiling white" which is not a color match, it is just a stock flat color. And on any repair, you have to paint the entire wall or ceiling, it is unrealistic to think you can match a color - even white- and do just a touchup.

Go to a Sherwin Williams store and ask for ceiling white and plain on repainting the whole ceiling. If a touchup with ceiling tpwhite matches, great. But don't hold your breath.

It's also possible it was NEVER painted and you are just seeing the color of the drywall mud / ceiling texture. If so, that's another reason you would need to paint the entire ceiling. A touch up with paint would never match.

 

The odds are if it's unpainted texture, that texture would have dissolved with the water leak.
Pretty much every white sold is a slightly different shade of white and many flat paints will have a slightly different sheen. Unless you have the same brand/line of paint I'd never expect it to touch up and even then if the paint job is old it would be iffy. Plan on repainting the entire ceiling to make it look right.

 

Touching up paint with the same can often fails so not having the original paint just about guarantees you won't get a match. Sorry, I think you're going to have to repaint the whole ceiling.

 

XSleeper, marksr and stickshift:

Thanks for all the insights. It seems that I will end up having to paint the whole ceiling, which is big undertaken considering that it involves the kitchen, living room, and dining room. There are furniture, appliances, electronics, etc; so everything will have to be covered.

But , first, I will give the touch-up with ceiling white a try.

 

sometimes you get lucky, hope it works out