10 Best Paints for Bathroom Ceilings in 2022

Painting is a lot more complex than it seems at first glance, and bathrooms are one of the toughest areas to find a good paint for. Water resistance, durability and moisture protection are only three of the things you need to look for when trying to find a good brand, so there’s a lot to consider.
It also heavily depends on how you’re using it: the materials you’re painting on, whether or not there’ll be extra coats underneath or on top if you need to use the bathroom while the ceiling paint is drying, and so forth. It’s best to decide on your own terms rather than being recommended something that might not work for you.
Below are some of the best paints for bathroom ceiling repairs and coverage that we could find, suitable for both the first-time painter and long-time DIY enthusiasts.
Related Review; Paint for Kitchen Cabinets.
View the Best Paint for Bathroom Ceiling, Below.
- Zinnser 03688 Ceiling Paint
- Rust-Oleum 2774 Zinsser Interior Eggshell
- Rust-Oleum 7791730 Protective Enamel
- Rust-Oleum 7791830 Satin Enamel Spray
- KILZ MAX Maximum Interior Latex Primer
- Rust-Oleum 276087 Mold Killing Primer
- KILZ TRIBUTE Interior Eggshell Paint
- Rust-Oleum 327920-6 PK American Accents
- Glidden Interior Paint + Primer
- Paint-Guard Mold Prevention Paint Additive
1. Zinnser 03688 Ceiling Paint


This stain-covering spray acts as a paint primer, sealer, and finish in a single can, taking as little as thirty minutes to dry under ideal conditions. The nozzle design makes it easier to angle the spray vertically, ensuring that you won’t spray it into a wall or some of your furniture by accident. The flat, matte-white finish makes it incredibly hard to spot on most ceilings, even if they’re tile-based, and the chemicals used don’t cause any yellowing or material damage.
Every 400 ml can of Zinsser Cover Up be used to either coat a ceiling in one thin layer, or target a specific area with multiple coats to completely cover up small spots of heavy damage, acting as both a fresh layer of white paint and a permanent sealant paint for bathroom ceiling stains.
This spray can be used to quickly patch up wet or cracked spots on your ceiling, meaning that it’s great for short-notice bathroom paint repairs.
Check Price on Amazon ➞2. Rust-Oleum 2774 Zinsser Interior Eggshell

This anti-moisture paint is designed to protect your bathroom ceiling from mold, mildew and other general types of moisture damage, and can either be layered over an existing coat of paint or used on a fresh, bare surface. Each gallon-sized can of Perma-White can be used to carry out multiple coats on an average-sized bathroom ceiling, or used for a single coat and stored for later use without making the leftover paint unusable.
As a water-based paint, it dries much faster than oil-based paints, even after multiple coats. It also doesn’t generate any bad odors or dangerous solvents when exposed to water, sunlight or humid air, making it ideal for use in a bathroom with a shower or bath that sees daily use.
This paint is great for humid environments, which could make it the best paint for bathroom ceiling repairs and protection if you need something that dries quickly.
Check Price on Amazon ➞3. Rust-Oleum 7791730 Protective Enamel

The corrosion and weather-resistant chemicals used in this paint mean that Rust-Oleum’s protective enamel is great for any surface, but its heavy resistance to moisture and water vapor makes it especially useful for bathroom ceilings. This, combined with its durability against fading, chipping and general abrasion easily makes it a contender for the best paint for bathroom ceiling protection, not to mention the fact that it can be applied to a variety of surfaces including metal, concrete, stone, and even treated wood.
Each tin of paint can cover up to fifty-five square feet, making it easy to get at least two or three coats out of it if you’re painting a bathroom of average size. The satin finish provides a glossy, sheen-free look that stops light from reflecting into your eyes, making it a viable choice for a full overhaul of your bathroom ceiling.
This paint is simple, protective and easy to apply, making it useful for protecting weaker surfaces.
Check Price on Amazon ➞4. Rust-Oleum 7791830 Satin Enamel Spray

This Rust-Oleum spray provides quick-drying, easy-to-apply protection to any surface, covering up to fifteen square feet if spread in an even coat. The paint itself has been carefully created to resist weather, chip damage, abrasion, natural corrosion and a variety of cleaning chemicals, making it useful for short-notice repairs and as a way to prepare freshly-installed ceilings for rough cleaning.
The smooth finish and matte-like look prevent it from overshadowing other materials, as well as letting it easily blend into a ceiling that’s painted the same color. The any-angle design of the can allows it to spray normally when held in any direction, even upside down, giving you a way to spray it behind permanently-installed appliances and fixtures in your bathroom.
Combining it with a regular tin of Rust-Oleum's paint can provide you with plenty of flexibility in how you cover your ceiling, but it can also be used as a standalone product to layer over regular paint if needed.
This spray can help quickly cover up and protect areas of your ceiling that suddenly start to get moldy or cracked.
Check Price on Amazon ➞5. KILZ MAX Maximum Interior Latex Primer

This water-based paint acts as a combined sealer, primer, stain coverer, and odor blocker all in one, offering an incredible level of protection from a single 1-gallon can. It's resistant to all kinds of damage, ranging from common hazards like water and rust to things like smoke, grease, ink, and even pencil markings, and works as a powerful seal for extra layers of paint. Each can covers around three-to-four-hundred square feet, meaning that a single can could last for months – or even years – of bathroom repairs and repaints.
When it comes to finding the best paint for bathroom ceiling overhauls, KLIZ MAX definitely stands out due to its extremely high resistance to a variety of damages, but it can also apply to multiple different surface materials: wood, bare brick, tiles, drywall and even things like painted metal or glass.
This combined paint can act as an easy, one-coat solution to major humidity damage issues.
Check Price on Amazon ➞6. Rust-Oleum 276087 Mold Killing Primer

This Rust-Oleum primer is designed to quickly kill off mold, mildew and other humidity-based growths or fungi, as well as any bacteria that could cause bad odors and ceiling damage. It also acts as a sealant, covering up any mold that doesn’t immediately die off to prevent it from spreading anymore, and it can be used to either cover an entire wall or simply target specific spots to fight off mold more efficiently.
Although it does produce some fumes while drying, they’re barely noticeable and dissipate very quickly, making it a minor inconvenience at most. Once dry, it won’t get damaged by humidity or splashing water, meaning that you can still use hot water without risking a resurgence of any mold or making the paint flake.
This mold-killing paint is great for fixing major patches of mold in a short amount of time.
Check Price on Amazon ➞7. KILZ TRIBUTE Interior Eggshell Paint

KILZ’s TRIBUTE is an acrylic paint that offers a flat, unobtrusive finish over up to four-hundred square feet per can, easily applying to wood, masonry, plaster and even drywall.
The eggshell finish keeps the sheen and light glare low without going as far as matte, still giving you a slight shine that can help reflect light around the room better in bathrooms with small windows or weaker lights. The finish is also resistant to mildew and moisture, as well as general grime and dirt from using the room, and won’t peel off or flake if scrubbed with a cleaning cloth or brush.
Thanks to its low VOC levels, this paint won’t release any dangerous or irritating chemicals into the air as it dries, keeping your bathroom safe to use and reducing how dangerous it’ll be to perform other repairs or re-decorations while the paint is still fresh.
If you’re wanting to add a completely new coat of paint to your bathroom ceiling, the TRIBUTE is an excellent choice, especially since it can be applied just like any regular paint.
This flat paint solves light glare issues and keeps your bathroom ceiling protected from water vapor.
Check Price on Amazon ➞8. Rust-Oleum 327920-6 PK American Accents

Rust-Oleum’s American Accents spray acts as an extremely quick-drying spray-based cover for any kind of ceiling material, even including things like wicker, unglazed ceramic and plastic.
It dries in twenty minutes, give or take a few depending on the heat and air humidity, and can cover up to twelve square feet per can if you need to do a full coating in a hurry. Even when used in quick bursts, this spray paint offers a surprising amount of durability, resisting both water damage and physical scratches.
Thanks to the very quick drying time, you can easily put multiple coats on a surface in the same time it would take one coat of regular paint to dry, and the low-sheen look means that it won't become annoyingly reflective after multiple thin layers. The any-angle tip means that you can spray the paint into crevices, under appliances, and in corners that normal brushes won't fit into.
This low-sheen spray is great for rapidly painting over problem areas or dealing with undesirable stains.
Check Price on Amazon ➞9. Glidden Interior Paint + Primer

This One Coat paint is incredibly resistant to both natural damage and physical cracking from cleaning tools, meaning that even a single thin coat can last a long, long time before needing to be repainted.
It's available in multiple different types, allowing you to choose how much gloss and sheen you want on your ceiling, but every kind and color provides the same level of surface protection. As a low-VOC paint, it’s not harmful to either you or your pets while it’s drying, and you can still check on the room without putting yourself in any danger.
Each can of this Glidden paint can be applied with both rollers and brushes and can be used for as many coats as you need without flaking or creating a bad odor. As a tool for repairing cracks and hiding stains, its long shelf life and high coverage mean that you can keep it stored safely away to repair any future damages.
This interior paint has primer already mixed, making two-coat problems into a single-coat job.
Check Price on Amazon ➞10. Paint-Guard Mold Prevention Paint Additive

As an optional additive, this Paint-Guard Mold Defense Additive can be mixed into any existing paint you own without permanently tainting or spoiling the resulting colors and texture. It uses non-toxic, low-VOC chemicals to keep you safe while you’re painting, and can dramatically extend the life of a new coat of paint when compared to using it without the additive. Thanks to its fairly versatile design, you can mix it into nearly any type of suitable paint and use it in your bathroom without any issues, even if it wasn’t originally the best paint for bathroom ceiling materials.
When mixed, the original paint becomes both mold-resistant and more durable, enduring humid or moist conditions much better than it used to while still retaining its smoothness, color, and sheen. In some cases, it can even increase the opacity of a thin coat.
This additive can be used with nearly any other paint and still deliver excellent results all round.
Check Price on Amazon ➞Paint for Bathroom Ceiling Buyer’s Guide
Choosing the best paint for bathroom ceiling redesign and repairs can be a difficult thing to do on short notice, especially since there’s a lot of different factors that can make an otherwise perfect choice completely incompatible with what you’re doing.
Having a better grip on what you actually need can make it much easier to narrow down your potential choices, leaving you with a smaller pool of options that fit the exact requirements you need.
The Ceiling Material
Not all types of paint will work with every material, so make sure you know exactly what material your ceiling is made of before you commit to a certain kind of paint. Choosing an appropriate paint will ensure that it lasts longer, sticks better and doesn’t flake or crack if it’s exposed to humid air, giving you a better-quality bathroom ceiling in the process.
Wood is often the worst offender – without treatment or bonding and prepping agents, it’s extremely limited in what it can be painted with, so it’s a good idea to replace or treat any wooden beams or boards you have on the ceiling before laying down your first coat of paint for wood.
A strong bonding agent can help you avoid these problems by letting incompatible paints and materials work together, while also acting as an extra layer for more protection, but it won’t be a guaranteed success.
Most bathroom paint types will be versatile enough to stick to at least one underlayer, so in a worst-case scenario, you might have to lay down a thinner layer of basic paint first before your preferred choice can stick to the ceiling properly.
The Type of Paint
There are a few basic types of paint that you’ll be able to get almost anywhere, with some of the most common bathroom paints being acrylic, satin, latex. The best paint for bathroom ceiling coverage is one that reacts well to water, so water-based acrylics can dry quickly and stay smooth even in humid conditions, and can even be cleaned with water if they get dirty.
Latex paint isn’t as durable and can be damaged if water is caught in it while it’s drying, but you can also use it on non-primed materials as an under-layer, making it a good choice for situations where a regular primer wouldn’t work.
Satin paints are deceptively durable, able to take a lot of physical punishment before showing signs of damage but are best suited to an environment with low moisture and not a lot of water vapor.
Prepping
Some paint will need a lot of prep work to add, especially if it’s supposed to be used after a specific kind of underlayer or base paint. You can technically apply any paint at any time, but the results won’t always look very good, so make sure you’ve read up on all of the instructions that may have come with your paint.
Even if it doesn’t recommend a certain underlayer, bonding paint or sealant, you should check and see if your wall needs them – they could improve the quality of your painting work and make both it and the wall’s original material last much longer, especially if it’s under threat by mold or moisture damage. You can use a mold remover in these cases, too.
Bathrooms are often the most likely to be affected by these problems, for obvious reasons so any kind of defense against them can make a big difference in the long run, even if it doesn’t seem to be doing anything straight away.
Should I use a Bonding Agent?
Using a bonding agent can make it easier to paint over less conventional materials like glass, varnished surfaces and certain bare metals. However, it also essentially acts as a second coat, meaning that you need to do twice the work in order to have your paint applied and drying properly.
Ideally, you’d want to use a paint that works ‘out of the box’ rather than having to undergo another step to make it compatible with your ceiling, but if there’s no other option, a bonding agent is often easier than building a separate physical layer or getting the material specially treated.
Keep in mind that a bonding agent won’t necessarily work perfectly, and may not work with certain types of paint depending on what it is, so you’ll also need to do your research on them to find one that’ll let your paint stick to it properly.
Should I use Sealing Paints as an Underlayer or Overlayer?
Certain paints will seal your ceiling against cracks, flaking and moisture damage, with some even extending to things like mold. However, you don’t always have to use them as a separate layer – some are thick enough to work as a one-and-done coat of paint, whereas others might work as an additive that you add to an existing paint to make it into a sealant.
If you’re using one that acts as an independent layer, it may be best to use it first rather than leaving it as the top layer: the sealant will work best if it’s against the wall rather than placed on the other side of a paint layer, although it can still work either way if applied properly.
Expert Tip
Most surfaces in a bathroom will reflect light, especially tile walls and floors, so paint with a high sheen could be used to make artificial lights seem more vivid if they shine light upwards too.
Did you know?
You can stick down long pieces of tape before painting to create clearly-defined straight borders, which is great if you want to avoid any paint spilling over onto the walls at the edges.