How do I paint paneling?

You can fill grooves with spackling, sand lightly, let spackling fully cure, prime surfaces, then paint.

I used to live in a place that the living room was dark brown paneling with vertical grooves too. It felt like living in a cave. The kitchen also had dark brown cabinetry. After cleaning all the paneling and kitchen cabinets I painted it all in Navajo White: washable semi gloss enamel for the kitchen, and washable flat latex for the paneling.

Be sure to clean the entire surface and grooves to remove built up grime, cigarette smoke, etc. first. Use spackle to fill in all the grooves. Then paint it all.

I'd just paint it with the grooves, looks good. Filling in the grooves will be very difficult and would show up worse. Will leave the wall patched and lumpy looking. To do it right you'd have to scim coat the entire wall. If you wanting a totally smooth wall, you have to drywall. Just prime and paint. If you don't like it you can try patching it.

Make sure the paneling is clean and dry. Prime with a good stain blocking primer like Kilz. Then paint like painting regular walls. Acrilyc latex paint will work. If the paneling has grooves you can fill them with non shrink drywall patching compound. Just put on enough to fill the grooves. Let it dry overnight. Next day use a damp sponge to smooth the patch. Then prime and paint.

I would leave the grooves or paint them an accent color maybe 2 shades darker or lighter. I would recommend cleaning with TSP, found in the paint department. Then prime with Kilz or Zinsser. Paint 2-3 coats.

Been there,done that..clean and prime! I didn’t fill in the grooves which was ok for me. Didn’t want the extra work,but then we had a whole double wide to do. But really clean well,and yes,kilz or zinzer prime! And use enough primer! 👋

We had a paneled room that was just too dark, with dark paneling as well. We just cleaned the paneling well, used a primer first coat, then painted a cream color. We didn't fill in the grooves, fearing that a less-than-perfect job would make them more obvious, and filling all those grooves would have been really tedious. It looked absolutely fine just making sure they were well painted with the wall paint. We did opt to paint the doors and some built-ins in the room a contrasting color. Everyone complimented it.

We got the idea from a relative who had a home with lots of knotty pine paneling--good wood, but hard to live with because of its orange-y tone. Painted, it looked stunning, grooves and all.