Painting Stripes with the Same Color, Different Sheen
I've done a lot of painting in my house. Once you get the basics down, it's fun to try something a little different. One project that I completed very early on involves painting stripes using the same wall color but a different sheen. This is an easy, high-impact project.
1) Determine the width of the stripes. This is probably mostly personal preference, but perhaps the scale of the room should be a factor. I chose 10" as a uniform stripe width.
2) Completely paint the wall with a flat sheen. For my room, this entailed applying one coat of primer and three coats of paint (the burgundy color was difficult to work with).
3) Once the paint is dry, begin measuring from the least conspicuous corner in the room. It is unlikely that your last stripe will measure exactly 10" (or whatever size you use), so make sure that strip ends up in the least noticeable corner of the room.
4) Using a level, measure and tape the stripes. I used 2" tape (I'll tell you why in a minute). Remember to tape the outside of a soon-to-be semi-gloss stripes. So if you went with 10" stripes and 2" tape, the exposed wall will alternate between 10" for the semi-gloss stripe and 6" for the flat stripe. This is the step most likely to cause problems, so I recommend that you eyeball the stripes one more time after you've finished taping.
5) Tape off the top and bottom of each 10" stripe. Instead of running tape along the entire wall I taped in 14" lengths because it made it easier for tape removal- I could remove the tape around each stripe once the stripe was painted.
6) Paint the semi-gloss stripes. Remember that I said to use 2" tape along the sides of the stripes? Here's why- with a 10" stripe, you can use a 12" roller and get full coverage on the stripe. The 2" tape gives you 14" to work with. The benefit of this is that there is nor risk of roller lines. On the other hand, a standard 9" roller will be 1" short. In my experience, you only need a single coat of semi-gloss.
7) I like to remove the tape shortly (around 5 minutes) after I paint. If you are working with a partner, just get a 2-3 stripe head start and have you partner remove the tape right behind you.
Hopefully, you end up with a room that looks as great as mine.
I wrote a follow-up post on sheen contrasting here.
Jon
P.S. If you found this post helpful, give it a Digg. Thanks.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
[...] has been a great deal of interest on my article on how to paint stripes with the same color, different sheen, so I like to follow up with some related [...]
[...] Home Improvement Articles: Painting Stripes- Same Color, Different Sheen Choosing the Right Tape for [...]
[...] article is similar to the earlier post on sheen striping. In this case, however, the technique was done with contrasting colors on an accent wall in a [...]
This was very helpful.I need to know if your using two different shades of semigloss(I’m painting my bathroom)do you do it the same way!!
[...] I Need More Tape! Home Improvement for Beginners « Painting Stripes with the Same Color, Different Sheen [...]