When house painting in Pleasant Hill, you don’t have to confine yourself to painting plain, solid colors. While plain colors look neat, many people still love to incorporate stripes on their walls.
Stripes can be horizontal or vertical, subtle or bold, symmetrical or mixed. If you’re on a budget but want to beautify your room, stripes are the perfect answer to your dilemma.
Painting stripes is not as easy as some people think – it’s often tricky. Most people feel frustrated with designing, measuring, and prepping the surfaces for stripes painting. Painting stripes on textured walls is even more disappointing. Perhaps the greatest frustration is when you peel off the tape you find those dreaded uneven lines. This can be very frustrating considering the time and the effort you’ve devoted to this task.
Decide first on what kind of stripe colors you want to paint for your room. Consider these options:
- It’s always a safe choice when you paint stripes whose color is just a few shades away from your current wall color. They stripes can be either lighter or darker than the wall color.
- Stripes with light colors make your room more elegant and modest. They also give the illusion of space especially to a smaller room.
- Stripes with deeper colors are ideal if you want to make your spacious room seem more enclosed and snug. Deep colors also add drama to the room.
- Using highly contrasting colors is considered a risk. Well-placed lines of contrasting colors will make a very strong statement, in a good way. Be careful, however, to be sure your room doesn’t end up looking like a circus tent.
Decide on what type of stripes would you want for your room. If you choose vertical stripes (given that they’re painted in the right size and width), they will make your room appear taller than it really is. Plus, vertical stripes add dimension to your space.
If you opt for horizontal stripes, they will emphasize the width of your room by making it look bigger, thus your room will appear wider and more spacious than it actually is. Horizontal stripes also seem to reduce the height of your room.
Diagonal stripesare more complicated than both vertical and horizontal stripes but they undoubtedly add more interest to your walls. Stripes can be applied on the entire wall, but it is more ideal on accent walls. Diagonal stripes can create an illusion of movement.
Painting stripes doesn’t have to be burdensome if you follow the proper procedures. Of course you need to begin by carefully measuring and leveling the wall on which you will paint the stripes. You can start by painting the entire room first and let it dry for an appropriate amount of time, depending on the type of paint used. Oil-based paints take more time to dry than water-based paints.
If you choose do vertical stripes, the most ideal width would be about six inches. You can adjust the width according to your preference.
If you opt for narrow stripes, they’re best for accent walls. If narrow stripes are painted on the entire room, it may end up looking a bit busy and could make you or your guests dizzy. Wider stripes seem to push the walls out.
For horizontal stripes, the optimal width is about 12 inches. When painting diagonal stripes, they should be broader with the size of the painted surface. You can also do a combination of colors and widths. For example, paint a wide stripe, and add a narrower stripe inside it. They can be of complementary or contrasting colors – but as implied earlier, using highly contrasting colors is a risk so do this method with care.
Use a good-quality blue masking tape to lay out your lines. Remember to press the tape down firmly on the surface to keep paint from seeping underneath the edges.
Most homeowners in Pleasant Hill prefer paint with flat, matte finishes for painting crisp lines. However, some people like to dare themselves by painting the whole surface with a flat paint and then adding stripes with a glossy finish to give some accent in the room.
As for painting crisp, straight stripes on a textured surface, first paint the entire surface with the base paint color of your choice. If you haven’t decided about the base color, a light color is a good choice. Next, use a good quality blue masking tape to determine the spacing of the stripes. It would be a good idea to mark the location on the surface using a pencil. The tape will eventually be painted with a secondary color which is different from the base color.
Use your fingers to firmly press down on the inner edges of tape. This will make sure that the tape sticks to the lower portions of your textured surfaces.
Using a foam brush, apply the base color, in gentle dabs, along the edge of the tape. What you are doing is to let a little amount of paint to seep under the masking tape. Once the base paint dries, it seals the line so when the secondary color is applied it won’t leak through. Allow the base paint to dry completely. Next, apply the secondary color inside the tape lines. Carefully and gently peel off the tape before allowing the secondary paint to dry.
Painting crisp lines can be tricky at first, but if you follow the proper steps of doing it you will have perfect lines that may radically enhance the look of your room. Crisp, straight lines are what make house painting in Pleasant Hill more challenging, but at the same time it is also very rewarding.
