Interior Tuesday: How to Paint Stripes

I’ve had a couple requests to share how I painted the horizontal stripes in my daughter’s nursery, so I thought I’d share my tips and tricks today! (Say that five times fast). I’m so sorry that I didn’t take pictures throughout the process, that was before my blogging days and I just wanted to get it done! So don’t hesitate to ask a question if anything confuses you!

First of all, I had a very clear vision of what colors I wanted and what width I wanted. We had to buy a couple of paint testers though, to make sure I got the colors exactly right. These testers are great!

I bought several of them and finally settled on the two colors I wanted (FYI the light pink is Glidden Pink Ballet Slipper and the darker pink is Glidden Pink Flamingo). After the wall was stripped of wallpaper…and stripped of more wallpaper…and finally primed over the last layer of wallpaper that had become part of the drywall  (that’s a whole different story), I painted the entire wall with the light pink. Then I had to be patient and wait for it to dry all the way. That was the hardest part…

Here’s the wallpaper that was impossible to remove:

Isn’t it gorgeous? Don’t get me started on the blue carpet either.

Once that dried I measured up from the base of the floor and put a mark every 12”, since this was how wide I wanted my stripes. After I made those marks I used the most incredible tool $15 can buy you; a laser level. THIS laser level to be exact:

It uses a command strip to adhere to the wall so it doesn’t leave any marks. So you stick this baby next to your mark, turn on the laser, make sure it’s level and apply your tape. This part can be tricky because you have to make sure you put the tape on the OUTER edges of the stripe you want to paint. So you can’t just put it above the line or below the line every time. you have to outline the stripe.

Another thing that saved my life was using the right tape. I HIGHLY recommend Frog Tape:

The edges lock so well on this stuff, it’s like magic. I had absolutely NO bleeding under my tape so my lines turned out crisp and clean. There’s also Scotch Blue Tape, but I found this worked a lot better for this particular application.

Once my stripes were taped off, I started painting. And here’s my favorite tool that $3 can buy you, a paint edger:

These are meant for edges of walls and corners, which is why they have wheels, but I found that they just hold on to the paint SO well that I could dip it once and run it along the entire length of the wall, and not have any loss of color. These things are amazing. I used them to paint my dressers, and even my doors. They just give such a nice distribution of paint, and they’re easier to control than a roller when you’re going horizontally.

Once I painted the darker pink using my fabulous edger, I waited for about a half hour before peeling off the tape. I didn’t want to wait for the paint to dry all the way, because then the tape can get stuck to the wall, and it’s REALLY hard to pull off in a nice long strip. So when the paint was a little tacky still, I pulled off my frog tape. THEN I let it dry all the way before moving furniture in or hanging pictures.

And just in case you haven’t seen it enough, here’s the finished product:

The whole thing took less than a couple hours. What took the longest was waiting for the paint to dry. But other than that, it was actually WAY easier than I thought it would be. So there you have it; stripes done right.

Now go stripe your walls! Or ceiling! Or whatever you want! And good luck!

Happy Tuesday!