How to paint perfect sharp lines [tutorial]

Have you seen beautiful images of painted stripes or colour block walls and wanted to recreate the look but wondered if you’ll end up spending hours touching up with a tiny artist’s brush to get your lines straight? Wonder no more! Follow these steps and you’ll get super sharp paint lines every time.

Tip: I’d highly recommend a self-levelling laser if you don’t want to spend a ton of precious time trying to get accurate measurements and marking different points to get a straight line. (I have this one.)

Step 1: Mask your line(s)

Pretty self explanatory. Use good masking tape. For freshly painted walls, I use the yellow (low tack) FrogTape®. Then dab the tape edges with a damp sponge or cloth to activate the PaintBlock® technology (to seal the tape). Don’t soak your walls please. Just dab with a slightly damp cloth.

Step 2: Seal tape with base colour

THIS IS KEY! Even with diligent damp dabbing (try saying that 3 times 🙂), some paint may still bleed through. To properly seal the tape, paint along the tape edge with the original wall colour. (E.g. I wanted to paint grey stripes on a white wall, so before painting grey, I painted along the tape edge with white.) This way, any bleed through will be the same colour as the original wall colour. Once dry, the tape edge will be well and truly sealed.

Step 3: Paint your new colour

At last, you get to paint your new colour! 2 coats usually gives a good coverage, but it is up to you to judge how many coats you’ll need depending on the paint you’re using.

Step 4: Pull off the tape

Ahh the moment you’ve been waiting for. Gently does it though! Savour the satisfaction of your super sharp lines.

The stripes I painted in my son’s reading nook follow the shape of the nook and link the books to the seating area. Pretty happy with them. 🙂

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