Tutorial: How to Paint Horizontal Stripes On A Wall

We’re participating in a fun series this month with four other blogs; it’s called Back to Basics and every Monday, we’re all going to cover something basic that we think everyone should know (but might not necessarily know how). That’s where we’ll come in, as we’ll share our design and decor 101 ideas.

I recommend that you pin all of them to your “Tips” or “Good to Know” boards on Pinterest, if you have those, for future reference. My “Tips” board is {here} and that’s where I’ll be pinning all of the great ideas.

So, as you probably guessed from the above photo, today I’ll be covering how to paint horizontal stripes. Clearly, we LOVE striping walls around here! Check out Amy’s kids’ bathroom {more photos here}:

Grey and yellow bathroom with striped walls | 11 Magnolia Lane

And her closet-turned-mudroom in her new house {more photos here}:

Closet turned mudroom | 11 Magnolia Lane

And I’ve just striped a long wall in my garage entryway, as well as a (much smaller) closet-turned mudroom.

As often as we’ve used horizontal stripes in our decor, the how-to’s for painting them come pretty naturally to us, but there are a few tips for making them turn out right (i.e. not crazy crooked or wonky) that we’d like to share with you.

1. First, decide on two (or more) paint colors. Depending on how much you want your wall to “pop,” choose two colors that are completely contrasting (ex.: black and white), close to each other on the paint chip (ex.: Edgecombe Gray and Revere Pewter, like I used on the wall above), or even the same color but a different sheen (flat and satin). The same color with stripes done in a different sheen will be the most subtle and will only show up when the light hits it.

2. Second, paint the entire wall in the darker color. If you’re using the same color but different sheens, I would paint the entire wall in the flatter finish (but that’s not a deal breaker). So I painted my entire wall in Revere Pewter, the darker of the two colors I was using:

Sconces | Paint

The reason that you’re doing the darker color all over is that you’ll want your darker color to be the very top and the very bottom stripe, right next to your crown molding or ceiling on the top and your baseboards on the bottom. Why cut in your edges twice?

3. Measure your wall from top to bottom and decide roughly how wide you want your stripes to be. You’ll want an odd number of stripes to have the darker color at the very top and the very bottom. For this wall, I decided that I wanted wider stripes–I chose seven total. Do a little short division (your mother told you this would come in handy one day!!) to figure out approximately how wide each stripe should be. You don’t want the very bottom stripe to be a lot thicker or thinner than the other ones, so you might come up with rather strange widths for your stripes. Since my wall measured 86″, divided by seven stripes, my stripes were about 12.25″ wide.

4. Once the paint is dry, use a level to measure down one stripe width.

I put a few pencil dots on the wall to mark where my line should go, then use the level horizontally to make sure that they’re straight.

5. Use painter’s tape for delicate surfaces to tape your lines, unless your base coat has cured for more than a week. **Important: remember that you’ll want to put the tape on the outside of the stripes that you’re painting so they’re the right width. I usually will tape a stripe and then write “Paint Here” in pencil in the middle of the one that I’ll be painting. I know, it’s pure rocket science.

To really break it down, use this pic:

6. Once your stripes are all taped and you’ve double check to be sure your tape is on the correct side of the line, go ahead and paint your stripes. I paint from top to bottom, and I highly recommend that you use a roller so that your brush marks don’t show (the more of a sheen that your paint has, the more likely this is to happen).