When painting textured surfaces, you'll encounter a few obstacles not found when dealing with flatter surfaces. Textured surfaces are irregular in nature, with bumps and dips that makes it difficult to apply an even layer of paint. This means you'll have to approach both the masking preparation and the painting job itself differently than you would with a flat surface. You'll need to change not only the procedure of covering the textured surface with paint, but the tools used in the process as well.
Masking the surface
Masking for painting a textured surface is especially difficult. No matter how tightly you apply the masking tape, some paint will invariably flow under the tape. For the best results, mask off the area as you would a flat surface, using masking tape formulated for rough surfaces. The specially designed tape has extra adhesive to stick closely to the surface and adhere more tightly than normal masking tape. Paint the surface as you normally would and then remove the masking tape before the paint dries. Use a cloth to remove any paint that seeped beneath the masking tape. This increases the painting time but will allow you to to create a clean line when painting the textured surface.
Painting
Apply more paint than usual to the surface to get even coverage. Use a brush intended for painting exterior surfaces, as these tend to have bristles that hold a greater quantity of paint. If using a roller, get a 3/4-inch nap roller, which will handle the changing texture thanks to the height of the pile on the brush. Use exterior paint as well as an exterior brush. Exterior paint is thicker than that intended for interiors, and it adheres better to the textured surface.
Fill the hills and valleys of the textured surface with the paint by modifying your stroke. Instead of a smooth motion with the brush, poke the surface with the brush head. With the roller, make sure that you apply the paint in different directions to get all sides of the hills and ridges formed by the texturing. Because of the thickness of the paint, you'll have to use more of a scooping motion rather than a dipping motion when applying the paint to your brush, and you will have to load paint onto the roller almost to the overload point, just short of having paint drip from the fabric as you lift it from the paint pan.
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