Texture paint for ceiling?
 

My ceiling in my current house has popcorn on the ceilings. However, I know that popcorn has gone out of style or is out of date. If I remove the popcorn texture by misting the ceiling and using a putty knife to scrap off the popcorn, can I use a ceiling paint with texture to paint over it? Has textured paint gone out of style or is it out of date too?

It would be just like regular ceiling paint right? Or will it collect dust like popcorn ceilings?

popcorn
 

If you look through some of the older posts this has been answered many times.
Popcorn ceilings may contain asbestoes, so I would have it tested first.
After that it is just labor,wet it down, scrape and sand, level out with compound, prime the ceiling, then paint.

Warnick,
Flat is in! Back east flat ceilings never went out of style.

Yes they have textured paint. I saw it on clearance at HD.

Check out: Removing Popcorn Ceilings, One Nasty Kernal at a Time - The Popcorn Forum
You are not alone in getting this stuff down. We just finished skim coating the ceilings of our former living room, dinning room, kitchen and laundry room. It's now a great room. We opted for flat and to skim coat to blend where we took down the walls.

We did buy a hopper to through on texture just in case we gave up the good fight. We tamed the beast and have smooth flat ceilings. It makes the ceiling seem so much higher.

You don't even need to scrap the popcorn to the bear bone. In a few bedrooms we left the half crater moons of the scrapped popcorn. It looks like orange peel. We put Kilz on it and then semi gloss white paint to reflect the light. Looks great!

Good luck

I've never heard or "texture" paint. I've heard of regular paint and ceiling paint, and I've heard of 5/8 inch nap rollers that you can paint textured ceilings with. I'm guessing that "textured ceiling paint" is just a thicker paint that doesn't form "drops" at the bottom of each popcorn pop like a normal paint would.

But, people really should know. There is a reason for the madness of covering ceilings with texture and/or painting ceilings with flat paint. The reason is that ceilings often have ceiling mounted light fixtures in the middle of the ceiling, or the room will have windows that come within a couple of inches of the ceiling. Both of these will often result in light striking the ceiling at a sharp angle, and exagerating any little glich or boo boo in the ceiling drywalling.

So, contractors that are building houses will put texture on ceiling or paint them with flat paint to help hide these defects in the drywalling.

That is, flat paint is not "in style", it's practical from the contractor's point of view because it reduces the number of complaints and call-backs from the buyers of new homes because no one is going to complain about a problem they can't see.

Flat paint is less practical for the home owner because the rougher the paint the more difficult it is to clean.

Flat texture not paint
 

Nestor:
You are right. People paint with flat paint and texture the ceilings and walls to hide the boo boos.

It was a beast skim coating our ceiling to make it flat, nice, glossy and to reflect any light that beams in from the windows.

The textured paint I saw looked like it might have been a primer with sand in it. I can't fully recall because I didn't use it. I only noticed it because it was on sale. Lowes has:

Valspar Smooth Texture Interior Paint | Valspar

We are in the land of texture. Most of the southwest has texture even in the high end homes.

I suggest a flat finish for the ceiling and walls for a modern look. However, depending upon where the house is located people might expect California knockoff, orange peel etc... If the house is Mediteranean or Spanish style a Monterrey texture might be a better choice.

Flat walls and ceilings with a medium gloss paint like eggshell or satin are the most practical from a cleaning and maintenance standpoint.

I knocked off the granules & just painted the ceiling
So it's now a light texture - came out nice

If you get it too wet the base of the texture will come off too
That makes it much harder
You then need to blend a texture in or scrape everything down

I'd be very reluctant to use a putty knife to scrape off texture. I'd be concerned that you're likely to dig into the underlying drywall with that putty knife,and damage it in the process, especially if it's wet from misting water all over the place.

If it were me, I would use a paint scraper with one of those tungsten carbide blades to scrape the texture off the drywall.

That's cuz those tungsten carbide blades are hard and sharp enough to do some serious scraping, but they're not quite sharp enough to cut into drywall paper unintentionally. So, me thinks you could do a better job faster and easier by using a tungsten carbide paint scraper rather than a putty knife.

Try both and see which one works better for you. Using a better tool on a big job can make a big difference in both time and effort.

Painter
 

My guy uses a puttyknife with the edges at the ends rounded over. Looks like a flat spoon like spatula. He claims it works the best for ceilings with stuff on em. He also mists the ceiling as he goes, not soaking it, just loosening it. Like Nestor suggested, try everything and tell us what worked for you.:)

It's also my understanding that the older stuff had asbestos in it?