Walls and Ceilings - simple texture for drywall

We are finally done installing a new shower in our master bath and we hired a drywall installer to put up the walls and ceiling that were demo'd. He skim coated the ceiling to a nice, smooth finish, but we didn't really have him do much to the walls. When I was preparing to paint I noticed that they are pretty rough in spots, not textured, just not nice and smooth, and I suspect the darker satin paint we've chosen will show this. They had been wallpapered.

I think it would be best to hide the roughness with some texture, but I'd like it to be as simple as possible. Can I just thin down joint compound and roll it on with a textured roller like you'd use for faux painting? Any other simple ideas? (We've already bought the paint so we can't buy a texture paint now.)

If you texture a rough wall you'll have rough looking texture. Texture can hide a little but the better shape the wall is in the better the texture will look.

I'd skim coat and sand the wall. Get the wall as good looking as you can, prime and inspect while the primer is wet. If any areas look bad, sand or skim them when the primer is dry and reprime.

It's not TOO rough. But when you run your hand over it, it clearly has "bumps" and such. I just think that the dark paint will show it as "rougher" looking than it is with white, and my paint is rather dark. I thought texture was intended to help hide the imperfections. That's all I really want. I don't want some spots that are smooth as a piece of paper and others that aren't, and that's what I've got right now.

Can you sand down the rough areas? Texture will help to hide defects but isn't a cure all. The heavier the texture the more it will hide. Sometimes dark paint will show defects more but sometimes less. A lot depends on lighting and angle of view. Gloss always shows more than flat.

Skim coating is really fairly simple. Basically you just wipe on [with a drywall knife] a thin coat of joint compound. Sanding when dry will usually eliminate any imperfections.

Texture is best applied by spray but can be rolled or sponged on. You can make texture out of j/c by thinning it down to the approximate thickness of paint.

Thanks. I'll try sanding the rough spots first and if I'm not happy then I'll try adding some texture with the joint compound. Appreciate the input. I should have had the drywall guy skim coat the whole thing, but I just told him I wanted bad parts of the walls repaired and smoothed and he did, but only the bad stuff. Ah well, he did a great job on the ceiling and he was cheap... Thanks again!