Surface Preparation

The first thing I do when painting a room spread professional-quality canvas drop cloths to cover and protect the floor. Spilled paint doesn't soak through canvas as it does a bed sheet or other lightweight cloth, and canvas is safer to walk on. Working on a plastic drop cloth can be like painting on roller skates.
The plaster walls in the room needed some fairly extensive patching work. In this type of situation, I start by fixing all the questionable areas, taking care not to create a lot of dust that might get into fresh paint. Next,
I caulk all gaps between the trim (baseboard, window and door casing) and the walls with a high-quality paintable caulk. I smooth the caulk with a damp rag. Caulking always makes the finished paint job look better.
I also make sure that the room I'm painting has adequate lighting. Even if there is a lot of natural light,
I always have halogen work lights and clip-on parabolic lights handy.
The next step is prepping and priming the trim. Painting trim is a different kettle of fish, but I make sure that the trim paint overlaps the wall about 1/8 in. When the trim is primed, I begin work on the walls and ceiling, letting the finish coat on the trim covers any stray paint from the walls.

Priming

The ceiling and walls in the room had water stains from an old roof leak that had been fixed; also, the former owners of the house were heavy smokers, which left the ceiling and walls stained. So I decided to cover everything with a stain blocking primer. "BULLS EYE".
The two steps to painting a large area are cutting in and rolling. Cutting in is brushing paint onto areas the roller won't reach.
Painters naturally start at the top and work down; I stand on a ladder and paint everything I won't be able reach comfortably from the floor. For cutting in, I never work out of the paint can but instead use a cut bucket. You can buy one or make one. I cut in with a 3-in. brush to give me a 3-in. band to roll into. Because the ceiling and walls are being painted with the same primer, I cut in the corners without being too careful, using the flat part of the brush on both sides of the corner.
Where the primer meets the prepped trim, I paint up to the edge of the trim using the narrow side of the brush, overlapping the wall primer onto the trim slightly but not being overly accurate with my line at this point. Overlapping coats at the edges of the trim creates a less stark line between the trim paint and the wall paint. When I've finished cutting in the upper parts of the room from the ladder, I work from the floor cutting in the rest.

Rolling equipment

Once the entire room is cut in, it's on to the rolling. The first thing I need is a roller frame, which is the handle and holder for the roller pad. Roller frames come in an amazing array of widths and shapes, but I usually stick with the standard 9-in. model. I avoid cheap roller frames because they don't hold up well.
The next-most-important tool for painting ceiling and walls is a telescoping extension pole. These poles come in various sizes, but for most rooms with flat ceilings, a 4-ft. pole that telescopes to 8 ft. or so works great.
I avoid screw-together extension poles; they're a lot of trouble.
The extension pole has a broom-handle thread on one end that screws into the roller frame. This tool keeps me from running up and down a stepladder to paint ceilings. If I paint a ceiling without an extension pole,
I end up working directly under the roller, getting spattered as I paint.
Next, I need the correct roller pad for the job and paint I'm applying. For smooth surfaces, a roller pad with a short nap (1/4-in. to 1/2 in.) is fine. But if you are covering heavy stucco, you may need as much as a
1-1/2-in. nap. For the oil-based primer that I'm using for the job in the photos, I chose an inexpensive 3/8-in. nap roller pad good for any kind of paint.

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