Compare drywall and plaster | What is best for walls

Often, if it is nec­es­sary to fin­ish the premis­es in new build­ings or dur­ing repairs, the ques­tion aris­es: which option to choose for lev­el­ing the walls — sheath­ing with plas­ter­board sheets or plas­ter? No one can give a direct answer to this ques­tion, because each of these types of fin­ish­es has cer­tain advan­tages, but also dis­ad­van­tages. Our experts, pro­fes­sion­al builders, have ana­lyzed the fea­tures of dry­wall and plas­ter fin­ish­ing meth­ods and high­light­ed the pros and cons of each method to help you make your final choice.

For bet­ter clar­i­ty, we have sum­ma­rized all the pros and cons of both meth­ods of wall dec­o­ra­tion in a table, using which you can make your choice.

What is drywall

Gyp­sum plas­ter­board (GKL) is a pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ing prod­uct in the form of a thin-walled pan­el con­sist­ing of build­ing gyp­sum and glued on both sides with a dense lay­er of card­board. Man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­duce sev­er­al vari­eties of dry­wall, which have dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties and are intend­ed for fin­ish­ing rooms for var­i­ous pur­pos­es.

Types of drywall and their application

Geometric characteristics of drywall sheets

The most com­mon type of dry­wall sheet has dimen­sions of 1200 x 2500 mm, although man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­duce sheets of oth­er sizes: from 625 mm wide and from 1500 mm to 4000 mm long. The thick­ness of the sheet can be in the range of 6.5 — 12.5 mm. You can also dis­tin­guish GKL by the pro­file of the edges:

1. rec­tan­gu­lar edge with mark­ing — PC;

2. edge with one-sided thin­ning — mark­ing UK;

3. edge, semi­cir­cu­lar on one side — PLC mark­ing;

4. edge, thinned and semi­cir­cu­lar on one side — mark­ing PLUK;

5. round­ed edge — ZK mark­ing.

The edges of the plas­ter­board sheets are pro­filed to sim­pli­fy the fin­ish­ing of the joints between them after instal­la­tion.

Features of the use of drywall

The main pur­pose of dry­wall is to lev­el the sur­faces of walls and ceil­ings in rooms. When using dry­wall, you should know the fol­low­ing fea­tures and rules for use:

1. for fac­ing walls and par­ti­tions in rooms with nor­mal oper­a­tion, as well as in the con­struc­tion of light par­ti­tions with a frame made of wood­en beams or thin-walled steel pro­files, stan­dard 12.5 mm thick plas­ter­board sheets are used;

2. when sheath­ing the sur­face of ceil­ings and installing sus­pend­ed ceil­ings with a frame made of steel thin-walled pro­files, as well as from a wood­en beam in rooms with nor­mal oper­a­tion, a stan­dard gyp­sum board with a thick­ness of 8 or 9.5 mm is used;

3. for cladding walls and ceil­ings in rooms with a spe­cial mode of oper­a­tion — with high humid­i­ty or fire haz­ard, with increased require­ments for sound insu­la­tion, dry­wall with the appro­pri­ate prop­er­ties is used — fire-resis­tant, mois­ture-resis­tant or acoustic;

4. a stan­dard dry­wall sheet with a min­i­mum thick­ness of 6.5 mm is used when con­struct­ing struc­tures of com­plex shape — arched, round­ed walls, round racks and columns, mul­ti-lev­el sus­pend­ed ceil­ings, etc., since dry­wall can be bent after wet­ting or cut­ting the sur­face of the sheet into seg­ments.

Plasterboard surface technology

The tech­nol­o­gy of plas­ter­board cladding of wall and ceil­ing sur­faces is sim­ple and con­sists in sheath­ing a frame made of wood­en beams or thin-walled gal­va­nized steel pro­files attached to the wall or ceil­ing sur­face. The frame includes hor­i­zon­tal rails that are attached to the floor and ceil­ing along the wall, and ver­ti­cal posts installed in 600 mm incre­ments with fas­ten­ing to the rails. A step of 600 mm was not cho­sen by chance, as it cor­re­sponds to the stan­dard width of a plas­ter­board sheet of 1200 mm.

1. After the frame is installed, dry­wall sheets are installed, which are installed ver­ti­cal­ly and attached to the frame posts and guide screws. It turns out fas­ten­ing around the perime­ter of each sheet and exact­ly in the mid­dle, self-tap­ping screws are placed in incre­ments of 200–250 mm, while at the junc­tion of two adja­cent sheets they are placed in a run.

2. After mount­ing all the sheets, the joints are glued with sick­le mask­ing tape, then the joints and the entire sur­face of the cladding are put­tied. The use of dry­wall with thinned edges makes the process of put­ty­ing joints more con­ve­nient and ensures a high qual­i­ty fin­ish. After put­ty­ing, the sur­face of the walls is primed and fin­ished in accor­dance with design solu­tions for inte­ri­or design — paint­ed, wall­pa­pered, tiled, etc.

3. The same tech­nol­o­gy is used to pro­duce ceil­ing cladding.

Anoth­er option for lev­el­ing walls or ceil­ings with dry­wall is that the sheets are attached direct­ly to the sur­face with a spe­cial adhe­sive with­out a frame. The main con­di­tion for this is that the sur­faces must be per­fect­ly even, for which a num­ber of prepara­to­ry work is per­formed.

Advantages and disadvantages of plasterboard cladding

To the advan­tages of plas­ter­board wall cladding sheets include:

1. the sim­plic­i­ty of the tech­nol­o­gy of work that can be per­formed by non-spe­cial­ists with basic skills in work­ing with hands. Plas­ter­board sheets are easy to process — they can be cut with a hack­saw, bent after wet­ting or cut­ting into seg­ments;

2. rel­a­tive­ly low cost of work and mate­ri­als used in com­par­i­son with oth­er meth­ods of lev­el­ing walls;

3. short terms of per­for­mance of works on fac­ing;

4. “clean­li­ness” of work, since much less waste, con­struc­tion debris and dirt is gen­er­at­ed when sheath­ing walls with dry­wall than when per­form­ing oth­er, espe­cial­ly “wet” fin­ish­ing process­es that use solu­tions;

5. the abil­i­ty to use dif­fer­ent types of dry­wall, spe­cial­ly designed for fin­ish­ing rooms with spe­cial oper­at­ing con­di­tions — mois­ture resis­tant, fire resis­tant or acoustic;

6. the pos­si­bil­i­ty of using dry­wall to cre­ate archi­tec­tural­ly expres­sive inte­ri­ors with ele­ments of com­plex shape;

7. when fac­ing along the frame, it is pos­si­ble to hide engi­neer­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions under the sur­face of dry­wall, or devices in this space for addi­tion­al heat or sound insu­la­tion.

The dis­ad­van­tages include:

1. a decrease in the usable area of ​​​​the premis­es when fac­ing along the frame, which is installed, although close to the walls, but “eats up” a space of sev­er­al cen­time­ters;

2. low resis­tance of dry­wall sheets to mechan­i­cal stress;

3. dif­fi­cul­ties when hang­ing cab­i­nets, shelves, etc. on the walls

What is plaster

Plas­ter­ing walls con­sists in apply­ing a lay­er of plas­ter mor­tar to a pre­vi­ous­ly pre­pared base, which may vary in com­po­si­tion. The main com­po­nent of the plas­ter solu­tion is a binder. The solu­tion is knead­ed on a cement, lime or gyp­sum binder, the choice of one or anoth­er com­po­si­tion of the solu­tion depends on the mate­r­i­al of the wall to be fin­ished. The main mate­ri­als used in the con­struc­tion of walls are brick or stone, con­crete and wood. In each case, the plas­ter­ing process is car­ried out accord­ing to its own rules.

On stone or brick­work, plas­ter­ing is car­ried out with cement or lime mor­tar with var­i­ous addi­tives, on con­crete sur­faces — with a cement binder-based mor­tar, on wood­en sur­faces — with lime-gyp­sum mor­tar.

In gen­er­al, the plas­ter­ing tech­nol­o­gy con­sists in the sequen­tial appli­ca­tion and lev­el­ing of three lay­ers of mor­tar: spray, soil lay­er and coat­ing lay­er. Tak­ing into account the pecu­liar­i­ties of the tech­nol­o­gy for apply­ing these lay­ers and their thick­ness, three types of plas­ter are dis­tin­guished: sim­ple, improved and high-qual­i­ty. Dif­fer­ent types of plas­ter are used depend­ing on the func­tion­al pur­pose and mode of oper­a­tion of a par­tic­u­lar room.

Plastering stone or concrete surfaces

Before installing any type of plas­ter, it is nec­es­sary to pre­pare the sur­face, the tech­nol­o­gy of which depends on the mate­r­i­al of the walls.

1. Stone, brick and con­crete wall sur­faces intend­ed for plas­ter­ing must first of all be cleaned of var­i­ous con­t­a­m­i­nants — dust, oil and oil stains, salts that have come out on the mason­ry sur­face. Stone and brick mason­ry, erect­ed with­out joint­ing, is excel­lent for any type of plas­ter, pro­vid­ing good adhe­sion to the fin­ish­ing lay­er. On smooth con­crete sur­faces, for this pur­pose, it is nec­es­sary to make a cut or notch.

2. To obtain a per­fect­ly flat sur­face, the walls are first checked by hang­ing in the ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal planes, fol­lowed by the instal­la­tion of marks or bea­cons. Ver­ti­cal­ly, the walls are checked with a met­al plumb line, the diam­e­ter of which should not be more than 20 mm, hor­i­zon­tal­ly using a plas­ter-rule-rule with a lev­el. Nails or wood­en slats can be ham­mered into brick and wood­en walls to set land­marks, mor­tar marks are used for con­crete sur­faces, which are pyra­mids with a trun­cat­ed point, about 5x5 cm in size and a height equal to the thick­ness of the future plas­ter­ing. Inven­to­ry met­al stamps are also used.

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4. Nails and stamps are attached to the wall at a dis­tance of 1 to 3 meters from each oth­er, and from the walls and ceil­ing at a dis­tance of 300–400 mm. To per­form high-qual­i­ty plas­ter, bea­cons from mor­tar or wood­en blocks with a sec­tion of 50x50 mm are installed in front of the prepara­to­ry lev­el­ing lay­er. In the case when the solu­tion from which they are made does not cor­re­spond in com­po­si­tion to the solu­tion of the fin­ish­ing lay­er, after the plas­ter­ing work, the bea­cons and marks are cut down.

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6. The pro­trud­ing parts of the walls — pylons, pilasters — are cov­ered with a plas­ter mesh, since the fin­ish­ing lay­er does not adhere well to such pro­tru­sions. For this, a fine wire mesh with a mesh size of 10x10 mm or syn­thet­ic fiber mesh is used. In order to pre­vent crack­ing, plas­ters also strength­en the joints of walls erect­ed from dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als to a width of 50 cm on each side of the seam. Rein­force­ment with met­al and fiber­glass mesh­es is also used to close var­i­ous fur­rows in the walls, for exam­ple, grooves and chan­nels with elec­tri­cal wiring and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

7. Fiber­glass nets can be of sev­er­al types: ser­pyan­ka, radish and nets made of glass threads. Ser­pyan­ka is made of lavsan, the radish is made of polypropy­lene. For the con­struc­tion of a rein­forced base, the first lay­er of plas­ter mor­tar is applied to the right places, then the mesh is sunk into it, after which the sec­ond lay­er of mor­tar is imme­di­ate­ly applied.

Plastering wood walls

Before plas­ter­ing the wood­en sur­faces of the walls, they are also cleaned of dirt, then uphol­stered with shin­gles from a thin lath with a dis­tance of 45 mm between the indi­vid­ual laths. The shin­gles are fas­tened with nails through two inter­sec­tions of the laths to the third, if the ceil­ing is uphol­stered, and through each drap­ery in the case of wall uphol­stery. Rei­ki are locat­ed at an angle of 45 degrees to the floor sur­face. A con­ve­nient way is uphol­stery with shin­gle boards, which are pre-made on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face, and then quick­ly attached to the sur­face of the walls.

The dis­tance between the ends of the lath­ing rails must be at least 3 cen­time­ters, oth­er­wise, if they swell under wet plas­ter, cracks may appear on the sur­face. The shin­gles are stuffed, start­ing from the bot­tom of the wall, reach­ing the top, if nec­es­sary, con­tin­ue to uphol­ster the ceil­ing.

In places where wood­en walls are joined to walls made of oth­er mate­ri­als, rein­force­ment from a met­al mesh is arranged. If plas­ter­ing work will be car­ried out in rooms with high humid­i­ty — bath­rooms, kitchens and bath­rooms, then a water­proof­ing lay­er is laid before uphol­ster­ing the walls with shin­gles.

Upon com­ple­tion of the plas­ter­ing work, the fin­ish­ing lay­er should dry out for sev­er­al weeks. Then the sur­face of the walls is treat­ed with a primer and put­tied in sev­er­al lay­ers. After the put­ty dries, a lay­er of a spe­cial primer is applied, then they pro­ceed to the fin­ish­ing — paint­ing, wall­pa­per­ing, ceram­ic tiling, etc. in accor­dance with the deci­sions of the inte­ri­or design project.

Advantages and disadvantages of plaster

The advan­tages of the method of lev­el­ing walls with plas­ter include:

1. coat­ing dura­bil­i­ty. After high-qual­i­ty plas­ter­ing of the walls, the coat­ing will serve for many decades with­out the need for repair, only the front fin­ish­ing lay­er — paint, wall­pa­per or cladding — will be updat­ed;

2. strength and reli­a­bil­i­ty — the plas­ter coat­ing is resis­tant even to sig­nif­i­cant mechan­i­cal stress, which can­not be said about dry­wall;

3. fur­ni­ture, heavy inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion acces­sories, house­hold and elec­tron­ic appli­ances, and oth­er equip­ment can be hung on plas­tered walls with­out fear;

4. due to the small thick­ness, the plas­ter slight­ly reduces the use­ful area of ​​the premis­es;

5. with the help of dec­o­ra­tive plas­ter, which is dis­tin­guished by a wide vari­ety of types and tex­tures, you can cre­ate rich and orig­i­nal inte­ri­ors.

The dis­ad­van­tages of plas­ter include:

1. com­plex­i­ty and long terms of work;

2. the need for strict adher­ence to the tech­nol­o­gy of work that must be per­formed by high­ly qual­i­fied spe­cial­ists;

3. “wet” process­es, accom­pa­nied by the for­ma­tion of a large amount of dirt and debris;

4. rel­a­tive­ly high cost of work and mate­ri­als used.