Can I live in my house while the interior is being painted by professionals in NB?

Yes, you can absolutely live in your home while professional painters are working — most NB homeowners do exactly that. With some reasonable planning and communication with your painting crew, the process is manageable and far less disruptive than many people expect.

Professional interior painting projects are typically organized room by room or zone by zone, which means painters are working in one part of the house while the rest remains fully usable. A good painting contractor will walk through the project with you before starting and explain the sequence. For a whole-house interior repaint in a typical Fredericton or Moncton home, crews often move through bedrooms first, then common areas, completing the project over 3-7 days depending on the scope. You keep access to your kitchen, bathrooms, and most of your living space throughout.

The main considerations are ventilation, dust, and paint odour. Even with low-VOC and zero-VOC latex paints — which are now standard for interior work in NB — there is a noticeable paint smell during application and for several hours after. Modern latex paints dry quickly (usually touch-dry within 1-2 hours) and the odour diminishes significantly by the next day. Keep windows cracked in unpainted rooms and run exhaust fans where possible. NB winters make this trickier since you do not want to freeze the house, but even a few centimetres of window opening in an adjacent room helps move air. In summer, open windows and a box fan in a window exhausting outward works very well.

Practical tips for living through a paint project in NB:

Agree on a schedule before the crew arrives — know which rooms are being painted each day and plan accordingly. Clear and cover furniture yourself the night before to speed up the process and protect your belongings. Keep pets in a separate, unpainted room or out of the house during painting — pets are more sensitive to paint fumes than adults, and curious pets can step through wet paint and track it everywhere. If anyone in the household has respiratory sensitivities, asthma, or is pregnant, spend the day out of the house on painting days and return once the space has aired out for a few hours.

For young children and infants, it is worth spending painting days outside or at a relative's place, especially when a full room is being done. This is less about toxicity with modern paints and more about keeping small hands out of wet trim and baseboards.

When staying elsewhere makes sense: If your entire home is being painted at once, if older oil-based trim paints are being used (higher VOC content), or if lead paint is being disturbed on pre-1978 surfaces, you should arrange to stay somewhere else for the duration of the work. Lead paint disturbance especially requires the house to be vacated and properly contained — no exceptions.

For a typical 3-bedroom NB home getting a modern latex interior repaint, staying in the house is perfectly reasonable. Just communicate with your painter, plan your days around the work schedule, and let the fresh colour transform your space.

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