Striped walls are nothing new, but the preppy clean look is always a classic. We decided to paint our coat closet with wide stripes to inject some personality into an otherwise small and cluttered space. Even though it may be one of the smallest areas of the house, we use the closet daily and it's nice to see a space you love, especially one that you see every day.
There are a lot of tutorials out there on how to paint stripes, but here are my top five takeaways from undergoing this project to make it an easier and more fun process.
1) Decide on the width of your stripes. The rule of the thumb is that you measure the height of the wall from floor to ceiling and divide it by the number of stripes you want. It is always nice to use an odd number of rows, i.e. divide by 5 rows if you want wide stripes, 9 rows for thin stripes. I ended up using 7 rows for our closet, which made each row approximately 13" wide.
The nice thing if you divide by an odd number is that you can leave both the top and bottom rows unpainted. This way you do not have to tape up the ceiling or any baseboards or moldings which saves you a lot of time and energy.
Lastly, when taping off your stripes start from the ceiling down. Even if you are off slightly with your measurements the difference will be in the bottom layer which is harder to notice. Plus, no one will ever break out a ruler to measure your stripes so even if the last row is larger or smaller by an inch it will be undetectable to the eye.
I also used a bit of tape to mark off the stripes that need to be painted. It's just an easy visual reference.
2) Use a good quality painters tape. For our project we had leftover painters tape from both 3M and Scotch from previous projects and I ended up using both. I started with 3M and when that ran out I used the Scotch. I found that the Scotch tape preformed better and was easier to remove as well.
When you tape make sure you use your finger or the edge of a credit card to press along the entire edge of tape on the side that you are painting to ensure there are no gaps where the paint might bleed underneath.
Lastly, you don't want to leave the tape up for too long. I started taping and then got sidetracked for a few days before coming back to the project. The older tape was a little bit more difficult to remove.
3) A laser level is a must! The area we painted was small and I think we could have gotten away with marking out the stripes on both sides and then taping but a laser level made the process so much easier (and for a bigger wall it is definitely a must have). We just marked one side of the wall with a a small pencil mark and then lined up the laser level and taped off each stripe. Since we had two adjoining walls, once we taped one wall we used the laser level again on the other end of the wall to match up the stripes on the second wall. And remember, it doesn't have to be exactly perfect. You don't have to make sure the level is 100% perfect - if it looks straight to your naked eye and the bubble is close to the center then you are good to go.

4) Make sure you have enough paint for two coats. It's hard getting a color match on your paint, and even two different batches of the same color might not be exactly the same. Speaking of paint, while I like the matte look, I always get satin or eggshell finish. With matte finish, any scruff or mark shows up on the paint and it's hard to clean. The glossier the paint the easier it is to clean, but conversely it is harder to do touch ups and the paint will highlight imperfections in your wall. I find satin a good compromise between the two.
5) Remove the tape when the paint is still wet. If you wait until the paint dries before your remove your tape, it is likely to pull off little pieces of paint with it which will ruin your clean line. And another painting tip: don't load up your roller or brush with too much paint. After you dip it, roll the roller a few times in the tray before painting. And if you use a brush just dip the tip in and not the whole brush. This way you won't get lots of drips and you won't get brush or roller marks because of of the excess paint. Speaking of paint drips, as soon as you notice one, wipe it off immediately with a wet paper towel. If you do it before the paint starts to dry you can usually easily remove it.
It honestly is a quick and easy project. Happy painting!