Have you ever dreamed of giving your car a professional paint job? Creating a DIY paint booth at home is an excellent way to achieve high-quality results without breaking the bank. You can do most auto body work and priming at home. However, painting a car without messing up your home or getting dirt in the paint job can be challenging.
I have been painting vehicles for over 45 years in a house garage, getting top results. I wanted to share with you how to set up an at-home paint booth that is very functional and affordable. Let’s go through the steps to build your own DIY paint booth, turning your garage or workspace into a haven for perfect paint finishes.
What Is Your Area That You’re Converting?
Before you get started in building a DIY Paint Booth, where are you building it? This is important for a few of reasons. To protect the area you are painting around and the difficulty of getting proper airflow and low contaminants in your paint booth.
If you are going to be using a garage that is attached or is in the basement of a house. Think about intake and exhaust. You have to have clean, filtered and dry air coming into your DIY paint booth. This means using an opening to an environment that is not full of moisture, like from rain, that can be filtered. The more you can keep your spray booth moisture-free, the higher quality the paint job will be.
DIY Paint Booth Intake
You want the air that comes into the booth to be dry, clean and not much below 70℉ minimum. If you’re in a basement or area where there is a little moisture in the air, you should be fine. You just want to avoid a lot of moisture from rain or heavy dew. Heavy moisture can cause paint imperfections or runs.
The ideal intake would pull from an open area of a basement, an attached or stand alone garage. Meaning, the intake would be open to the main area of the garage that isn’t being used for the booth. In other words, pull directly from outside the booth.
Pulling air directly from outside, can leave you with varied results in your paint job. Direct outside air can fluctuate in temperatures, humidity and moisture. Even on days that seem perfectly sunny and warm, weather does fluctuate throughout the day. If you’re pulling air from inside a structure, that air is more stable and environmentally controlled.
If you have a garage that has HVAC, this would be perfect for painting. Since you are pulling the HVAC air, you are in no danger of hurting the system with over-spray.
Using an outside structure like a barn or shed type garage, you will need to rely on good weather conditions. Since you can’t control the intake air with something like an HVAC system, then pick a warm, dry sunny day.
The best garages are going to have a concrete floor. If the floor of your area is going to be dirt, grass or gravel. It would be best to cover it with a tarp or plastic to reduce dust from the floor.
DIY Paint Booth Exhaust
Paint exhaust is usually the biggest concern when painting cars at home. You don’t want to paint the side of your house, or cars in your driveway or the neighbors property. Consider yourself lucky if you do not have to worry about any of those concerns. However, if you do, there are ways to filter your paint exhaust.
The best fans to use are like the old time window vent fans that have speed selections. However, larger box fans work just as well. My pick would be a 20 inch high velocity fan, something around 3000 CFM. You can also use two 20 inch box fans together for your DIY paint booth.
The best method is to build ductwork from an opening you select to be your exhaust port. The easiest way to build the duct is to use cardboard boxes. Inside the boxes you can use egg crate cartons or just use hanging cloth throughout the walls of the box.
Place the fan at the end of the cardboard boxes. This allows the vacuum side of the fan to pull the paint over-spray. Since the fan is on the filtered side of the exhaust, it’s protected from the motor getting paint in it.
You may still get a smell of the paint coming out. However, the particulates that will actually coat other things outside the booth, will be eliminated. I can give you another tip that is very important. Using any type of filter such as an HVAC filter on the exhaust side, will clog up almost immediately. It would turn into something you would have to keep changing out, so I suggest not to use those.
Materials For Your DIY Paint Booth
Below are possibly material you may need to construct a DIY Paint Booth.
- PVC Pipes or Wooden Frames: Create a sturdy frame to support the booth.
- Plastic Sheeting or Drop Cloths: Cover the frame to enclose the booth.
- Box Fans or Ventilation System: Ensure proper ventilation for fume control.
- LED Lights: Illuminate your workspace for better visibility.
- Tape and Zip Ties: Secure the plastic sheeting to the frame.
- Filters and Exhaust System: Maintain a clean and safe painting environment.
- Booth Tack Spray
Design Your Frame
Begin by designing a frame using PVC pipes or wooden planks. The frame should be large enough to accommodate your project and tall enough to allow you to work comfortably. Secure the frame in place using sturdy connectors to ensure stability.
Be sure to measure the vehicle you will be painting. Allow yourself at minimum of a 3ft walk-around space. It is best to attach your framing to the structuring of your garage for stability.
Enclose the Frame with Plastic Sheeting
Once your spray booth frame is in place, cover it with plastic sheeting or heavy-duty drop cloths. Use tape and zip ties to secure the sheeting to the frame, creating a sealed enclosure for your paint booth. Ensure there are no gaps to prevent dust and debris from entering.
Set Up Ventilation
Proper ventilation is crucial for a safe and effective DIY paint booth. Place box fans strategically to create airflow within the booth, directing fumes outside through an exhaust system or open door. This prevents the buildup of hazardous fumes and ensures a well-ventilated workspace.
Install Lighting
Good visibility is essential for achieving a flawless paint job. Install LED lights insideyour DIY paint booth to illuminate your workspace adequately. Position the lights to minimize shadows and highlight the surfaces you’ll be painting.
You will want lighting above, middle and down low, evenly spaced out to ensure adequate visibility. When spray painting a car, the over-spray fumes can often get blinding. So lighting is key to a great paint job.
Create an Exhaust System
To maintain a clean environment, set up an exhaust system with filters. This helps capture and filter out paint particles and fumes, preventing them from spreading into your home or workspace. Regularly replace filters to ensure optimal performance.
Entry Door
You have to have an entry door into your booth. It can be as simple as slitting a vertical line in your plastic, but where do you put it? No matter how you create your entry door in you DIY Paint Booth, is has to be at the exhaust end. If you place your entry door towards the front or middle, you’re asking for debris in the paint.
You can cut a vertical slit in your plastic. But you will want to take another piece of plastic and tape it on the outside. Tape one side of it on only and the top and possibly the bottom. Ensure that this piece covers at least 3 feet on each side. This will allow it to be flexible for you to slide in and out of it. Don’t worry, when the fan is running, it will pull it closed to seal.
Spray Booth “Booth Tack”
Once you have your booth constructed, cover the ceiling and walls with a booth tack coating. This coating serves two purposes. One, it actually catches dust from getting into your paint. Secondly, it is water soluble, which means once you are done with the booth, wash it down. This lets you clean the plastic off so you can use it again if you want.
Conclusion
Building your own DIY paint booth at home is a rewarding project that opens up endless possibilities for creative endeavors. Whether you’re restoring a vintage car, refinishing furniture, or tackling other DIY projects. A well-constructed paint booth can make a significant difference in the quality of your work.
If you would like drawn out examples and a more in-depth guide to building a paint booth. You should get my FREE eBook, “Auto Body Guide and Tips.” It not only covers how to build a paint booth, but it also covers the tricks of the trades. If you are new to auto body and paint, you can pick up a few tips from another one of my post, “How Long Does it Take to Paint a Car.”
There is another alternative now, and that is inflatable paint booths. They can be put anywhere on your property or inside your garage. These inflatable booths are already setup to be a paint booth and there isn’t much to get started with them. These booths are made in all sorts of sizes, depending on how big your project is.
Inflatable booths run off 110V house current, so an extension cord would be all you need. Here is my pick for the best inflatable paint booth. Better hurry on this one, as it is marked down 22% for Black Friday. An additional alternative would be to convert a portable garage into a DIY Paint Booth.
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Isn’t there a concern for explosions or fires using a box fan with solvent based automotive finishes? Seems like a fan with separate enclosures for the motor to avoid potential hazards. Maybe I’m wrong, I feel like I’ve reads that before though…
Hey Casey, there would be no concern for fires or explosions. Paints are not like gasoline, plus you wouldn’t have your fan right in the booth with you for a gaseous build up to occur to create a condition for an explosion. If your home made booth is setup correctly, you will have a good flow of air to where your booth will never really get fogged up. I have been running box fans and old window style fans for decades, never had an issue. There are those that want to put a filter over the fan but the issue there is, the filter becomes clogged up quickly.
The way I show how to build a duct for filtering works the best. You can either run your fans before the duct or after. If you really worry about the fumes being ignitable, then I would suggest you place your fans at the end of your duct pulling the fumes out. That will have the fans further away from the actual painting. Although, like I said, it isn’t an issue at all.
Glad I stumbled across this DYI project since I am doing almost the exact same thing. I have 2 20″ box fans and follow everything you mentioned except the exhaust. You show the 2 fans at the end of some cardboard ducting and then you have 2 filters. I am not too concerned with the recirculation since the exhaust will go out the garage door and the intake will be coming from the back of the house. If I understand what you said, the filters before the fans are OK as long as they are not pushed right up against the fans?Thanks for the write up. Good info.
You do not want to put filters on the exhaust side, they will clog up in minutes. You filter your intake and honestly, it is better to pull air from an inside structure. The reason is because, outside air is going to change and fluctuate in humidity and temperature, causing the paint to either dry spray, run or sag. So, if you could give yourself just a few inches to pull from inside your garage that is outside you booth, you will get more control and a much better job.
You can either put your box fans right at the exhaust opening of your booth or at the end of your duct. I show putting them at the end because of the filtering I show to catch the particulates. My idea was to use cardboard boxes as a duct. Inside the duct, put pieces of cardboard at angles to catch the over-spray. You can also use old shredded sheets and tape them at the top of the inside of the inside of the duct. You want to shred the sheets so that it doesn’t block the air flow but does catch the paint, that way you’re not painting your neighbors house or cars.
However, if you live in an area where you do not have to worry about neighbors or over-spraying your own house or cars, then I wouldn’t worry about filtering the exhaust. You just can’t use filters like AC filters or any type of solid media filters. The over-spray will collect and stop the flow within minutes.