How To: Paint a Striped Wall

Let me just start with: I LOVE stripes. I've wanted to paint a striped wall in my room for forever, but Joe was never on board. A few months ago I painted every wall in my room a light grey, and apparently Joe felt like it was too boring. He wanted some more color in the room--so I suggested that I paint stripes to break it up. He FINALLY said yes, and I figured this would be the perfect week to do it since he is in Dallas. Once everything was all said and done, the whole project really didn't take much time at all; the longest part of it is just taping it off. Here's how I did it: 

This is my 'before' picture. Plain grey wall, all ready to go. (Don't mind my makeshift nightstands; I'm currently shopping around for new ones) 

Step 1: Tape off your wall. Grab your measuring tape and measure the entire length of your wall. My wall measured in at 175 inches. Divide it by how many stripes you want (until you get a nice even number). My stripes ended up being 6.25 inches wide. I marked both the top and bottom of my wall so that when I taped it, I would be sure to get straight lines. The stripes with the tape across them were the ones that weren't going to be painted. 

Step 2: Seal off the tape. I learned this trick from Pinterest: using the base color of your wall, paint along the tape line to minimize paint bleeding. It seals off the tape so that you get nice straight lines.

Step 3: Paint the stripes! Here is the first coat of white paint. Looks crooked and ugly, but once the tape is peeled it should look great. 

The whole wall of stripes. Be sure to let the paint completely dry before peeling the tape off. I'm guilty of being impatient and peeling it while its still wet--but I made sure to hold off on this one just to make sure my lines were crisp. It definitely helped that I was painting Joe's closet while the stripes were drying :)

The finished product! Nice crisp lines, minimal paint bleed, and a much cuter room. I'm in LOVE with how this turned out! Now to just get those nightstands to finish off the look ;)

I started this project last night; taping off the wall and "sealing" the tape off (so that it would dry overnight and I could just start painting first thing in the morning). Start-to-finish, including taping, this entire thing took somewhere between 3 and 4 hours--not nearly as gruesome of a project as I thought it would be. I will absolutely be doing stripes in more rooms :)