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You may know the best way to paint a wall with a roller, but how do you clean it afterwards? Some people assume the best place to rinse a paint roller is in the bathroom sink, bathtub, or laundry room utility sink. While this may be a popular cleaning method, it’s far from the best. Allowing paint to pour down into a sink drain can lead to pipe blockage and corrosion while harming aquatic life and the environment, even if the paint is mixed with water. For a safer alternative, you can clean paint rollers in a water-filled bucket with a hose and scraper, or with a specialized roller cover cleaning tool. 

For the first method, scrape off as much paint from the roller as you can into the paint can before placing the roller in the bucket. Then, fill a 5-gallon bucket with warm water and dish soap. Remove the roller cover from the cage and place it into the bucket until it’s completely submerged. Rinse the roller with a garden hose, either in the same bucket or a second empty one. Put a pair of gloves on and use your hands to remove any excess paint as you rinse it. If you want a faster cleaning option with less water usage, here’s how to use a roller cover cleaner.

Roller cover cleaners, like the Marshalltown roller cleaner, feature a plastic tube that comes with a built-in contoured scraper on one end and a threaded end for attaching a garden hose. You’ll need a 5-gallon bucket for this method as well, but an empty one. Use the scraper to remove the excess paint from the roller and let it drip into the bucket. Then, place the roller in the cleaner and attach the hose to the threaded end. No need to remove it from the frame.

Next is the rinsing step. Make sure the roller is securely in place and in the bucket before turning on the water. Let the water run through the tube and down into the bucket until you don’t see any more paint coming from the roller. As a final cleaning step, you can remove the roller from the cleaner, do one final pass with the garden hose, and let the roller air dry. Follow your city’s guidelines to safely dispose of old paint.