Do you need to do a popcorn ceiling patch because of a hole in the ceiling? Whether something hit the ceiling and caused a ceiling hole or you moved a light and need to patch a hole in the ceiling, learn how to patch a popcorn ceiling hole in just a few steps today!

We were replacing lighting which exposed a hole in the ceiling

As we started on our kitchen makeover, we decided to remove an old ceiling fan and replace it with a more modern semi-flush-mount light. The fan had a larger base that attached to the ceiling (see below) and when we took it down, we found that we had a hole in the ceiling that needed to be fixed.

This project was many years ago and, at this point, we had spackled drywall but never done any type of hole patching. Going in to this project, we knew that our popcorn ceiling was positive for asbestos. Learn how to test for asbestos yourself as well as more information about asbestos in general if you have popcorn ceilings! So, we knew that we needed to be careful with patching the popcorn ceiling but needed to get the project done. Let me show you what we did!

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Popcorn Ceiling Patch How To

*Some of these steps will be similar if you don't have popcorn and you are just needing to know how to patch a hole in the ceiling.

Supplies needed for patching popcorn ceiling

• Fibatape
• Light weight Spackle
• Sanding pad
• Zinnser Popcorn Ceiling Patch or Homax Popcorn Ceiling patch
• Paint Brush
• Kilz Stain Blocker Paint
• Painter's Tape
• Plastic Sheeting

How to patch popcorn ceiling

• Grab your ceiling repair patch and place it over the hole.
• Spackle lightly over the patch and let dry.
• Lightly sand the spackled area.
• Brush on the popcorn ceiling texture (this will look like cottage cheese).
• Let popcorn ceiling dry.
• Drape plastic to protect area and then spray on stain blocker paint.
• Let dry.

That's it! It's not an ideal situation to have popcorn ceilings because they look dated. We've been lucky enough to be able to have our asbestos abated in the spaces that we've renovated so we are slowly getting rid of them but if you don't have that option and you need to patch a hole in the ceiling... this works!

Let me show you a bit of this process with photos so you can see the progression of the popcorn ceiling patch.

Steps for Patching Popcorn Ceiling

Place ceiling repair patch on the hole and sparkle

After that is dry, sand and then you move on to the popcorn texture part of the tutorial. It seems like Homax Popcorn Patch is the most popcorn ceiling patch but our store was out of that so we picked up Zinsser Popcorn Ceiling Patch. You can typically buy this type of thing in spray can (which we've tried since then and don't recommend as much) or a bucket (which you'd brush on).

Brush ceiling texture on to ceiling

Luke brushed it on and it immediately started looking like cottage cheese. It was pretty impressive.

Let the ceiling texture dry and then you are ready to do the final step.

Cover area with plastic and spray stain blocker

Here's a progression of these steps on the ceiling:

After letting the paint dry for a few hours, we installed our light.

If you've lived with popcorn ceilings, you know they change in in color as they age. At some point ours could have been painted by previous homeowners. Your results will vary based on these factors. For our job, this was a win for us because the hole in the ceiling was patched and the brushed on popcorn texture and color was a close match!

Since this project, we've definitely improved our kitchen quite a bit! See our kitchen renovation for all the details and sources.