Which is better - drywall or plaster? We count, compare, choose. Which is better: plaster or drywall for the walls Which is better to plaster or glue drywall

Plaster is a good option for wall decoration, especially if it is gypsum, cement or environmentally friendly clay plaster. Drywall or plaster is better in the home - this question is a common dilemma for many people renovating their homes. Modern dry building mixtures does not require much experience.

In turn, drywall can be installed using metal profiles fast enough. Plus, drywall boards are cheaper than plaster. Both methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, which we will look at in this article.

Drywall or plaster - which is the best to use?

Many new home owners are increasingly deciding to complete plasterboard finishing on interior walls ah, instead of traditional plaster. This solution, however, has some drawbacks, although, without a doubt, this technology is much cheaper and allows you to quickly finish all the walls.

From year to year, drywall is becoming an increasingly popular material in housing construction, renovation and reconstruction. This is really very good material for walls of any room, including baths and kitchens, in addition, it can be used for device false ceilings... But in order to make the right choice, you need to analyze well how to align the walls: drywall or plaster, and what will be better in each case.

Plaster wall decoration - advantages

Plastering interior walls has many advantages:

For living rooms, living rooms should choose traditional gypsum or clay plaster. At the same time, there will be no such choice the best solution for premises where there is high risk wall damage - garages, workshops, etc. For such premises, more durable cement-lime mixtures are best suited.

The mortar should be applied with a thickness of approximately 1-2 cm. To fix the surface and durability of the coating, the walls should be primed with special compounds. And only then apply one or two layers of plaster.

You can also perform machine plastering, which significantly speeds up the finishing work.

Disadvantages of plaster

Most big disadvantage This type of finish is the need for good drying of the walls before applying a decorative layer, such as paint or wallpaper. In order for the guaranteed wall to dry, you need to wait about 3 weeks. This increases repair time but provides a durable finish.
Carrying out the work requires experience and high precision in applying the mortar and leveling it in order to create a completely perfect wall, without "waves". Special beacons for plaster make the process easier, but they will require additional costs.

In turn, the big advantage of plastering walls in comparison with drywall is that the plaster along the entire wall forms a dense surface, in contrast to gypsum boards... With poor-quality finishing of the seams between the slabs, over time, vertical and horizontal cracks on the walls.

It is very easy to make grooves in a plastered wall for wires and cables, as well as plumbing pipes. This is important if you need to reconstruct and install or add new cables.

Plasterboard wall decoration

Installation of gypsum plasterboards can be done in two ways:

dry (on profiles);
by gluing to the surface with special glue.

In practice, these two technologies are durable and this is enough for domestic needs.

Benefits of plasterboard finishes

you can do this work yourself, even if you don't have much experience;
gluing the panels is not difficult, you just need to accurately determine the location of each plate and devote a little more time to decorating the wall with windows and doors.

Many people say that the advantage of drywall is that it allows the wall to be very flat and smooth. There are two points to keep in mind here:

It is possible to do this with plaster, but more experience is required.
For less experienced people, drywall will be easier to work with, but care must also be taken that the wall itself is not too crooked. The layer of glue for gypsum should be within certain limits, it should not be too little, and too much, which sometimes may require additional processing of the walls before assembling the panels. Part of the problems can be solved by the installation of panels on profiles, but this solution is more expensive and more laborious than installation by gluing.

In the case of drywall installation, it is important to choose the correct type of slab for the room, namely, to choose it for the conditions where there is a certain temperature and humidity. In bathrooms, kitchens, laundries, impregnated so-called "green" slabs should be used, which have increased moisture resistance, but it should be borne in mind that they are not waterproof.

After installing the panels, on profiles or on glue, a very important stage of work is correct finish all joints between panels. If on this stage we make mistakes, then over time, unaesthetic cracks may appear on the surface of the walls, which spread to the paint layer.

It is also necessary to carefully control the location of the places where the adhesive is applied, so that this does not lead to sagging of the board, for example, when hanging heavy shelves on the wall, which can even lead to a crack in the board.

Disadvantages of plasterboard finishing

high water absorption;
complete disrepair in case of flooding by neighbors;
lower strength and load capacity;
the thickness of the wall will steal the area of the room.

How to choose which is best?

If the most essential has a financial aspect, it is better to decide on the decoration of the walls with sheets of drywall glued to the wall. However, if we want a more durable and reliable coating, then traditional plaster is recommended. Here we have a fairly wide selection:

gypsum plaster;
clay;
limestone;
cement;
their combinations and some other modern technologies.

Both types of flooring must then be covered with a putty and carefully sanded to a completely flat surface before we paint them or wallpaper.

Gypsum boards are less demanding materials for installation than plaster, so we can, if we have certain skills, finish the walls ourselves with them. For plastering works some experience is required, this is a more labor-intensive technology. An interesting alternative is machine plastering, which allows you to quickly and efficiently perform a large amount of work.

In terms of speed of work, drywall is better than plaster, as it allows you to finish repairs faster. It should be remembered that when plastering, we have to wait before painting, usually 2-3 weeks. This problem does not occur with drywall, which can be painted much faster.

GKL vs PLASTER
(wall decoration)
A terrible fashion for GKL and GVL. They mount it wherever they go - just to mount it. Cool. Much cooler than Soviet plaster. I want it everywhere. What's not to like about plaster? Not the one sold in the store, packaged in 20-30 kg bags and costing more than a bag of cement. And ordinary - one part of cement + loose lime for plasticity + 3 parts of sand (well, this is so - conditionally). Unclear.
So, let's take a look at the main aspects of heavy plastering and compare them to drywall craft.
Technology.
Someone thinks that the gypsum board is mounted faster than plaster is plastered. I will object. Plastering can be no less lightning fast than plasterboard. For example, high-quality plaster of 100 m2 of walls is produced for 135.72 persons / hour. The same volume of gypsum plasterboard is obtained a little faster - for 128.85 people / hour - i.e. only 5.3% faster (data on labor and material consumption - from the Grand Estimate, or rather - from the Federal Unit Rates). And this is where the big minus of plaster lies, which professional builders strongly dislike, but mere mortals can more or less painlessly endure . Drying. Until the plaster dries and becomes completely light - about further processes type of putty-painting can be forgotten. Basically, a private trader who counts his money can wait a week - what does time mean for his home, right?
On a salary in Ulan-Ude, they can rip off from 120 to 250 rubles / m2 for both, depending on professionalism and arrogance - i.e. I did not see much scatter in favor of this or that material
Material costs
Well, here the plaster drives and knocks the gypsum board into one gate. Judge for yourself:
GKL:
1. Fasteners for plasterboard installation: plastic dowels - 190 pcs. (RUB 190)
2. Fasteners for plasterboard installation: metal-metal pointed screws 3.5x9.5 - 50 pcs. (10 rub)
3. Fasteners for mounting drywall: screws drywall-metal 3.5x35 - 140 (56 rubles)
4. Sheets of plasterboard standard, Knauf, 8-10 mm thick - 105 m2 (8400 rubles)
5. Accessories for the installation of drywall: guide profile 50x40x0.55 - 70 m (1170 rubles)
6. Accessories for plasterboard installation: ceiling profile 60x27 - 200 m (4700 rubles)
7. Accessories for the installation of drywall: straight suspension 60x27 - 70 pcs (350 rubles)
Total - 14876 rubles / 100 m2 or 149 rubles / m2
Plaster (for a layer of 2 cm):
1. Ready-made finishing heavy mortar, cement-lime 1: 1: 6 - 2.5 m3
Or
1. Building quicklime lump, grade 1 - 350 kg (2450 rubles)
2. Slag Portland cement for general construction and special purpose brands 300 - 510 kg (2346 rubles)
3. Sand for construction works for plaster mortars very fine natural finishing layer - 2.75 m3 (2400 rubles)
Total - 7196 rubles / 100 m2 or 72 rubles / m2
As we can see, materials for plaster are 2.07 times cheaper than for gypsum board. Unfortunately, the consumption of materials for plastering strongly depends on the curvature of the walls. But there is one trick that all my familiar drywall workers resort to, justifying the need for drywall to level the walls. The dialogues proceed as follows (with intonations from the movie about Bukin):
GKL: your walls are crooked. Deviations from the vertical 1.5-2-3 cm
Customer: Oh, what to do
GKL: you can plaster, but estimate the thickness of the layer what it will be. It should already be 2 cm, plus align your 1.5-2 cm - all 4-5 cm will come out. Well this is a layer, but it will fall off under its own weight. The mesh will be needed, plastering will have to be done two or three times. Better drywall- once - and you're done.
Customer: I love you, do what you want.
In general - haha three times. The thickness of the plaster is taken on average 2 cm. In fact, it (plaster) turns out to be of different thicknesses. If there is a bulge on the wall, the plaster is reduced to almost nothing to 3-4 mm. If, on the contrary, it is "bulge" - then the thickness of the basting increases to 3.5 cm. And on average, 2 cm comes out along the entire wall . In my practice, not a single customer has ever finished what everyone shamelessly uses. So walls with deviations of up to 2 cm can be safely covered with plaster and not worry about increasing the layer thickness. Also, often a particularly healthy bulge (sticking out the farthest - drywall people especially like to cite it as an example) can simply be hung up
Aesthetics
Nonsense. The plaster can be made even like…. like ... like the surface of a lake in calm weather. Drywall can be mounted to resemble an oversized washboard. It all depends on diligence.
Exploitation
The plaster is rapidly breaking forward, and the gypsum board remained at the start . Good plaster reliable, sturdy, does not break when abruptly leaning on it , can be easily repaired in separate places.
GKL - much weaker than plaster; to hang furniture, you have to be sophisticated in different ways; hides the area of the room; theoretically (I have not seen it myself) beautiful place habitat for all sorts of bugs, spiders, mice, rats.
Summary:
With wall deviations of 2-2.5 cm, you can safely apply plaster.
With deviations up to 4 cm - there is a reason to think about it.
With absolutely uneven walls you can still do plastering - if the considerations for operating outweigh the .
It is better to use drywall in case frame houses... Or when the deadline is tight. Or excessive dampness threatens something ...
PS. My living room is 56 m2 with walls 27 m. 2 plasterers with one auxiliary and an imported mortar were plastered in three days, working 6-7 hours each. The plasterers were of Soviet production - two healthy aunts under fifty dollars.

One of the most popular questions for a homeowner planning to decorate walls is which is best to use plaster or drywall during renovation work? The first material has a long history, for our ancestors it was practically uncontested, drywall is a relatively new trend in the field of repair, although it has already gained considerable popularity and is crowding out the time-tested plaster.

In order to facilitate your choice in this difficult dilemma, we considered in this article the pros and cons of each of the materials, found out what would be cheaper - to plaster or sheathe the walls with plasterboard, and also asked a specialist about which situations would be preferable to use one or other finishing method.

Material features

Plaster is an extremely flexible material with which you can get a lot of different final repair options. It can be used both for rough work, such as leveling walls, and for finishing work. Plaster can be divided into two broad categories:

Advantages and disadvantages

Plaster as a material for leveling and decorating walls has a number of undoubted advantages:

Price. Whoever says what, but in a prolonged crisis for everything more compatriots, this point is decisive when carrying out repairs. Drywall also does not belong to the category of expensive materials, but plaster gives it a big head start in this matter.
Plaster, especially correctly applied, is the guarantor of the result High Quality and enviable durability. Unlike drywall, plaster has the highest maintainability, its structure allows you to precisely and accurately eliminate any defects that have arisen on the walls.
For supporting perfect result does not require one or the other additional work once you complete the renovation, you can forget about interfering with wall decoration for decades.
Plaster is loyal to interference with wall space. If you want to hang a TV or a picture on the wall, then nothing stands in your way. This does not require additional work or the involvement of professionals, everyone can handle it.

Nevertheless, like any other material, plaster has several disadvantages:

Renovation using plaster is a lengthy process. Of course, if you have perfect smooth walls, and you yourself have good experience in repair work, then you can cope in a moderate amount of time, but otherwise other materials allow you to complete the repair faster.
Anyone who has ever faced plastering walls knows that during such work, an apartment turns into a battlefield. This type of repair belongs to the category of wet work, which means that dirt will be an inevitable companion throughout the entire repair.
Although plaster pleases with its cheapness, but in especially neglected cases, when the curvature of the walls is visible to the naked eye, you may need an excessive amount of material for finishing, which will make the final estimate of the work more than when using drywall sheets. Thus, the answer to the question of plastering the walls or sheathing with drywall directly depends on the initial parameters of the walls themselves.
Working with plaster requires serious experience, not everyone will be able to understand by eye what result the person making the decoration has achieved. If you have hired a specialist, then it is advisable to have a person nearby who can take a job from him and note all the shortcomings, if any.

Drywall

Material features

Drywall is a heterogeneous material with little variation from species to species. Yes, drywall can accept different sizes and forms, but by by and large the main difference is the presence or absence of moisture resistance. This point can become critical for your renovation if you plan to decorate the walls in rooms with a humid microclimate, for example, a bathroom or a bathroom. Let's take a look at the existing options:

Plasterboard is a classic cardboard sheet with plaster base... It can be used both for wall decoration and on the ceiling. The downside of this material is, as already mentioned, the fear of water, which limits the possibilities of its use.
Specialized, more modern look drywall, easily tolerates moisture, which expands the possibilities of its application. It should be noted that despite all the additives, moisture for drywall is still destructive, and therefore it is not necessary to hope that you can make repairs with it, and forget about it for twenty years. Most likely, it will begin to lose its aesthetic characteristics in five years, and therefore it will have to be regularly updated. Another type of specialized drywall - fire resistant, can be useful when decorating a kitchen, although it is also not optimal solution when fighting fire hazard.

The versatility of drywall excites the minds and imaginations of many people who are coming renovation work, because now we will try to survey the strong and weak sides material.

Advantages and disadvantages

The advantages of drywall products include the following characteristics:

Plasterboard gives practically unlimited room decoration. If the plaster is able to please with a variety of shades and imitate appearance other material, then drywall gives real freedom of expression - convex shapes, curly patterns and much more can be realized with its help.
Works with drywall are dry, and therefore the apartment in which the repair is taking place does not turn into a dirty non-residential premises for the duration of the repair work.
Drywall "breathes", and therefore disease-causing fungus will not start on your walls. Also, a sheet of drywall significantly increases sound and thermal insulation, which is often a key indicator in the context of thin walls of the Russian housing stock.
Works that use drywall sheets are quick, so you don't have to live in a state of permanent repair.

But this material also has disadvantages:

In rooms with high humidity drywall can be used, but it will add a lot of headaches. No moisture-repellent solutions will allow the material to exist in its normal form for a long time.
The main disadvantage when it comes to small-sized rooms is that drywall eats up space.
Drywall is fragile, and therefore, to install an object on the wall, you will need to preliminary work to strengthen the finish on the wall.
The cost of the material is low, but higher than that of plaster. As already mentioned, the final cost of the repair directly depends on the complexity of the work - if the walls are even, then plaster will turn out to be a more affordable material from a financial point of view. If they are to be seriously leveled, then finishing the walls with plasterboard instead of plaster may be cheaper.

To obtain correct geometry rooms, you can use plaster, but with a trowel it is very difficult to make straight lines, much easier leveling walls with plasterboard, pros and cons which we will consider next.

Plasterboard wall alignment - the pros and cons are obvious

In any case, even if there are several shortcomings, one thing is obvious - to assemble a frame for wall cladding from special profiles, if there are instructions and necessary tools even a beginner can. In the skilled hands of the master, the plaster is applied to any vertical surface or ceiling with a smooth uniform layer, turning into a reliable coating for brick, concrete or even wooden walls... However, there are few such craftsmen, and often in a fight with recalcitrant building materials inexperienced newbies enter, resulting in something indescribable. An excellent substitute for wet plaster is its dry and relatively cheap analogue - drywall (for example, Knauf-sheets), the multilayer sheets of which have a perfectly flat surface.

Step by step instructions with exclusive photos and video materials.

First of all, let's focus on the positive aspects of the material in question. Its main purpose is considered to level the walls, and the effectiveness in solving problems with irregularities is an undoubted advantage of drywall. It is hardly possible to find any substitute that so effectively forms the geometry of the premises, even with differences in surface levels up to 8-10 centimeters. Second positive property is the ability to create vertical and ceiling structures the most complex shapes which is highly appreciated by the designers. And one more quality that has ensured the material's high popularity is the masking of communications. It is easy to stretch any wires and pipes under the sheathing between the frame profiles.

It would seem that all of the above is already enough to count drywall the best option for wall decoration, but it would be wrong to ignore other positive sides... In particular, such as environmental friendliness (the components of the material are a gypsum layer with reinforcement and a cardboard shell), versatility - the coating is suitable for any type of room. With the exception of the shell, the sheets of the material in question are not flammable, and some brands are completely fireproof, this is another plus. Some manufacturers claim good soundproofing qualities of their products, but this is only partially true. Drywall is only to some extent able to dampen noise, which is why various noise-absorbing materials are always placed under the cladding.

The site masters have prepared a special calculator for you. You can easily calculate the required amount of drywall.

But leveling the walls with plasterboard has pros and cons in equally essential. So, the counterweight of fire resistance is high moisture absorption. That is why, starting to extinguish a small fire in a room decorated with plasterboard with water, you can say goodbye to the casing, even if the fire has not damaged it yet - water will do it. Also, the flooding of the apartment by the neighbors from above, or simply an increase in humidity in the room, will turn into an irreparable disaster. Based on all this, it is not recommended to use this coating in the bathroom and in the kitchen. However, there are brands that are not afraid of water, but they are somewhat more expensive. standard sheets... Two more disadvantages, less critical - the relative fragility of the material and a slight reduction in the volume of the room when using load-bearing profiles.

Drywall instead of plaster - what's the difference?

Both of these materials are similar in that they are used to level the walls, but otherwise they are the exact opposite of each other. If the plasterboard cladding is laid in a matter of hours, then plastering the same area takes more than one day, due to the multi-layering. The first of the materials is extremely light, it weighs about a little less than a kilogram for every millimeter of thickness (regular or moisture-resistant drywall), which for a 9-millimeter sheet will correspond to 7.5 kilograms. The second type of coating is quite heavy, the mass of a square of the hardened mixture with a layer thickness of 3.3 centimeters will be approximately 25 kilograms.

The thicker the drywall sheet, the smaller the gaps between the profiles must be made in the frame so that the structure does not deform under the weight of the sheathing.

Also the difference between the ones of interest to us finishing materials consists in the magnitude of the loads they can withstand. If you glue a couple of hooked plates to the plaster layer applied to the reinforcing mesh and hang a small bookcase on them, nothing will happen to the coating. The same operation performed on drywall will deform it. Directly during finishing works mixing the mixture and covering the walls with it is always associated with big amount dirt: splashes, scattered components of the solution, scraped off the excess rule. The use of dry plaster sheets allows you to maintain relative cleanliness, a small amount of gypsum dust is formed only during the sawing of the material.

There are a number of other factors pushing the use of drywall instead of plaster. So, for example, let's remember the simplicity of laying communications under sheet cladding and look at the wall covered with cement-sand or lime-gypsum mortar. The frozen mixture does not leave any other options but to cut the coating, that is, cut grooves in it for the wiring. Further, the result after mounting the sheets immediately pleases the eye with smooth surfaces. The plaster applied to the walls requires additional attention to itself, in the form of smoothing with the rule, bringing gloss with a float and careful processing with putty of the shells remaining after finishing work.

What drywall has no equal

Shields knocked out of planks, brickwork, welded steel sheets - all this can become a partition in the apartment, but it will not look the best way, and it will create a little convenience. As for the leveling mixture, it can in no way replace the wall. And here drywall sheets for this purpose are used constantly and have proven themselves the best way... The technology is not much different from the standard room cladding, just the bearing profiles are made into a frame not on the wall surface, but across the room with fasteners to the floor and ceiling. This is precisely the main advantage of drywall over plaster.

disadvantages sheet material mounted on a frame erected for the partition are quite standard. This is the fragility of the sheets, which becomes more noticeable when there is no rigid base - with some effort, you can break through a light wall, and this can only be avoided by strengthening the frame with additional profiles. This is a fear of hydration, which, by the way, may turn out to be positive quality when it is necessary to bend the sheet into any curly structure (for this purpose, drywall is moistened and in this state is attached to the frame). And, finally, low noise absorption, without a special sound-insulating filling, the partition, sheathed with sheets, will turn into a drum, sounds will be transmitted from room to room through metal profiles.