Quality roller covers have a plastic or phenolic center that won’t absorb moisture and get soft. Conversely, poor quality covers tend to have a cardboard center.  (Not at all conducive to being submerged in paint for longer than a nano second.)

Quality roller covers have solvent resistant glues so the fibers won’t end up on the wall but stay bonded to the core. Look for the words shed resistant on the package. (Poor quality covers shed worse than my dog, Elvis.)  It doesn’t start right away but after a few dips and rolls it becomes very noticeable that little fuzzies are being deposited on your walls and unless you have a pair of tweezers and are really quick about it they will be there for ever.  (Or at least until you sand them out.  Yuck.)

The rest of what you need to know about roller covers has more to do with the surface you are painting…

If you are painting with shiny paints like a semi gloss or satin you should use a 3/16″ nap cover. The shorter the nap the smoother the finished paint job.  (Minimal roller texture is what you are after with a shiny paint)

If you are using a matte or eggshell finish paint you will want to use a 3/8″ nap cover. This tends to be the most typical paint roller nap.  It will work for flat paints too not just the matte and eggshell.

For more textured surfaces you should move up to a 1/2″ nap cover or higher depending on the depth of the texture. These work the best for slightly textured ceilings and walls with a lot of imperfections.

A note about ceilings:  If you go too heavy with the nap you will end up with more product on yourself than on the ceiling.   Even anti splatter paints have a hard time if the roller cover is too thick.

I like to stick my finger into the nap of the cover to see how much of a texture it can handle.    Rough surfaces like cement block or stucco can handle a 3/4″ nap easily.

A quality cover has more fibers to hold more paint which means you have to reload the cover less frequently.

Finding a roller cover that works for you is not as life changing as finding that perfect paint brush.   You probably won’t hear an angelic chorus when you pick one up out of the bin.   You probably won’t give it a special place in your painting tool box.  You probably won’t experience painting nirvana when you use it…

But it will make painting a whole lot easier.

I have tried a few different covers in my long and sordid painting history.  I too, have made that 10pm run to the supermarket and to grab a cheapie cover off the shelf.  I knew better and did it anyway.   Let’s just say many hours of sanding later, I learned my lesson.

So these days my favorite cover is the Wooster Pro Doo Z.  It has a plastic core.  It doesn’t shed.  It holds a lot of paint.  It is not prone to leaving roller marks (and if it does that is because I am pushing too hard on the roller frame).  It can be washed for reuse.  It is everything you could ever want in a roller cover.   And it fits snuggly on my Wooster R017 Sherlock Frame.

Hmmm,  I think I feel a song about roller frames coming on…