A: From what the experts — residential painters and remodeling contractors — say, you'll have to first determine the cause of the moisture that provides the medium for mold to grow.

Although most paint manufacturers are producing products with mold-growth inhibitors — Zinsser, Sherwin-Williams, and Benjamin Moore, to name three — and designed for high-moisture areas such as kitchens and bathrooms, just covering over the problem isn't enough.

I asked my remodeling experts if they could explain to me how the presence of a dehumidifier in the basement would control moisture in the kitchen. One said it would matter only if the kitchen were in the basement or the dehumidifier were a whole-house unit.

Frankly, without adequate ventilation, what happens in the kitchen stays there. Cooking produces great quantities of moisture; on warm or hot days, moisture condenses on walls. Combined with grease from cooking, it also can easily darken the color of the walls.

There's another point my experts bring up. More often than not, the mold you see is an outward and visible sign of a problem behind the walls. There could be a leak bringing moisture behind the walls, and only now are you seeing evidence of it.

Simply covering the problem with a mold-inhibiting paint, no matter how good that paint is, will not solve it in the long term.

I realize that getting rid of mold is very expensive — sometimes requiring the remodeling contractor to tear everything down to the studs (and sometimes even the studs are covered) — but you'll need to find a reputable company to look behind the walls.

If the mold is indeed just on the surface of the walls, then you'll need to look into doing something about properly ventilating the kitchen.

Make sure you do these things before you head for the paint store or home center.

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Home improvement trends.

Better Homes and Gardens magazine has unveiled its home improvement trends for 2010. As expected, today's projects fall into the must-do rather than want-to-do category.

Speaking at the International Builders Show in January, Eliot Nusbaum, executive editor for home design, said "the focus is now on low-cost improvements that will pack a big punch."

With only 16 percent of 2,300 magazine readers surveyed saying "now is the right time to spend" on home improvements, more than half are focusing their efforts on needed repairs and maintenance, Nusbaum said.

Three-quarters say the economy has had an effect on their home improvement plans, with about half of those surveyed having changed their plans during the last year.

Smaller projects prove to be the most popular, such as painting a room (54 percent); replacing or adding flooring or carpeting (38 percent), decorating or redecorating a room (35 percent), and landscaping the yard (30 percent).

Energy efficiency is also a focus of home projects, Nusbaum said. Those who responded to the survey favored installation of Energy Star windows and doors (34 percent), high-efficiency heating and cooling systems (31 percent), and Energy Star appliances (31 percent).