I did some minor repairs to a room prior to painting, and after wiping the walls down with a damp cloth I rolled the paint on (latex satin finish) and after a short time bubbles appeared in various places. Some were very small, and others may have been the size of a dime! I had previously painted this wall about 2 yrs ago with the same type of paint.
This painting problem is called blistering and is usually caused by excessive moister under the newly applied paint film or surface contamination.
It is possible when you wiped down the walls you deposited moister that affected the paint, but this is very rare. A better possibility is some kind of surface contamination. Many things can affect the paint; these include soap and grease. Unfortunately, there is no way to know for sure.
The best way to deal with this paint problem is to lightly sand the bubbled paint, feathering the edges if possible. Spot prime with a good fast drying universal primer and apply some spackling paste if necessary to hide the bubbled areas. Make sure to reprime the spackling paste before repainting.
Primed wall underneath and still it bubbles
We just painted a bedroom and a few spots bubbled… we used good primer underneath.
Sometimes this happen when you have used a hot drywall mud to patch the walls before you paint. The best thing to do to avoid this is to use a good primer before your repaint and keep the room warm. Another help is to use a good roller cover.
Air circulation. I'm an amateur who had the same problem. Followed all the advice from the internet and the guys in the paint section: paint at the "right" room temp, "right" humidity, new roller, make sure the surface is clean, dry, primed and at room temperature. Ended up painting the same hallway six times, changing things up each go round because of all this (ultimately) useless advice.
All the painting created an orange peel effect, so I had to do a mud skim coat and sand it all back down to recreate a smooth surface. Finally asked myself why this hallway was blistering so much more than all the other rooms I had painted. The difference was it didn't have vents or sufficient airflow. Painted the sixth coat with a fan (on low) aimed down the hall, drastically fewer bubbles. Put the fan on the bubbles that did appear, and by the time the paint dried they were gone. Has to do with moisture/solvents trying to evaporate/escape from the paint, presumably the air movement helps the process. Hope this helps someone.
