Wobbly lines at the wall / ceiling joint or anywhere else just looks bad. Straight lines are not easy to do even for professional painters. Professionals prefer to do their cut in lines free hand with a brush if at all possible because it is faster than masking off a line. But you must get a straight line however you go about it if you want clean crisp color joints
A word about cutting in.
The more dramatic the color difference, the straighter the line must be. A dark wall color up against a white ceiling will be less forgiving and every slight wiggle will be magnified. A monochromatic scheme where the ceiling is a tint of the wall color will not shown wobbles and wiggles as much.
When you are painting a joint where two colors meet (like a ceiling /wall joint or a door casing / wall joint), you don’t want to cut in both colors. You will normally paint one color without regard to the color border, and then come back and cut in one time with the second color to get a straight, clean color line. Normally, you would paint a ceiling and “bump” the walls (wiping the paint smooth on the walls) and then cut in only the wall color where it meets the ceiling. Cutting in twice is unnecessary and slow.
Free Hand Cutting In
The preferred choice. In order to get a good straight line free hand, you need a steady hand, a good brush and good technique. Lets consider the brush:
Characteristics of a quality brush
- Flagging. A good brush holds a lot of paint on the bristle tips. The method that brush manufacturers use to get paint to cling on to the tips of the brush is to split the ends of the bristles. The split ends (known as “flagging”), allows more paint to cling to the “business end” of a paint brush - the bristle tips. This allows for better hide and a “ one stroke” line. If you are sketching your cut in lines, they will be wobbly. One careful and patient tracing of the inside corner or around a light fixture will look straighter and crisper.
- Chiseling. The bristles need to come to a point. You can’t paint a line with a blunt object. Some brushes come to a square cut end, where all the bristles abruptly stop, forming a square “block” of bristles - not good for cutting in. The bristles of a good brush will taper down to a point, this is known as “chiseling”. A brush that comes to a “knife - like” point will “cut in” (now you know where the term comes from) a fine line.
Cut in technique
You are either going to push the brush away from you or pull it toward you when you cut in. Everyone has their own preference, you will probably have to do a little of both during the course of painting a room.
The brush stroke should be one continuous stroke about 12’ long or so depending on the brush used. How you join each of the individual brush strokes into one continuous cut in line will have a lot to do with the straightness of your line. Join the strokes together carefully. I prefer to cut in from dry into the previous wet line.
Don’t abruptly correct your line
If you get a little wobble you will naturally want to pull it back to straight immediately but that is not the best way to handle a slight wiggle. You want to g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y bring you line back to straight when you get a little wobble, this will look straight from normal viewing distances, but an abrupt pull back will just “tell on you” and bring attention to your mishap.
Trace and retrace
The best secret to getting straight lines is to back track after the paint is dry and straighten out any wobbles by retracing the line so that the little wobbles are gradually brought back to correct and straight. Doing this after the paint is dry allows you to use a smaller, thinner and more sharply chiseled brush than you normally would use during the course of rolling and brushing. This retracing and straightening of your cut in line is less time pressured too , allowing more careful consideration to the quality of the line.
Cheat onto the ceiling rather than the wall
When you walk into a room your vision is usually not up an the ceiling but across to the wall. A wobble of the ceiling paint onto the wall is more noticeable than a wobble of wall paint onto the ceiling. Because of this, you want to be sure the wall paint clearly has no wobbles of ceiling paint on it. It is safer to paint the wall color in a straight consistent line 1’64th of an inch up onto the ceiling than to wobble back and forth from the ceiling to the wall and back to the ceiling etc…. stay on the ceiling edge of the joint.
Using masking tape
Masking tape is a sure way to get a clean line if you use the right tape, but it is slow. Most masking tapes are made of crepe paper and have a textured surface to them. The best tape for graphics, stripes and straight cut in lines is 3M’s 2080 blue tape. There are a few blue tapes out in the marketplace, but the 2080 is the one that is smooth which makes it resistant to paint bleed under the tape.
To mask off a clean line you will need to lay the tape down straight, burnish the edge down by rubbing with a finger nail or a spoon etc.. and then painting your line with a dry brush pulling the paint away from the tape edge (rather than pushing it into and perhaps under the tape edge) using the tape as a shield. In spite of the smooth tape, burnishing and careful brushing , you can still get a spot of two of paint bleed which you may have to correct after the paint is dry.
Using a shield
Paint shields are messy. You have to wipe them after each brush stroke and usually you will get pant on the back side which transfers over onto the other paint ultimately where you will have to touch up in the end. I don’t like shields. The only time I use a shield is when I paint baseboard. I use the shield to mash down the carpet so that I can get my paint line as close to the floor as possible. In order to do this, you must mask the carpet off to protect it from paint smudging coming off of the shield. The tape also prevents the carpet from springing back into the wet baseboard paint once the shield is removed.
Cheating: Running a caulk bead
Some painters will run a thin caulk bead where a white ceiling meets a painted wall. The thin caulk bead can easily be wiped into a smooth straight line. This technique can be used where white trim meets the painted wall too. While this works well for painter’s, most DIY’ers will find that they can’t get a thin caulk bead or a smooth line using this technique. You need to be aware that some caulks will yellow over time and ruin your nice clean white line after a period of time.
See related link: Paint Straight Lines Using a Paint Edger Tool
These two qualities are the most important for the purpose of cutting in straight lines. There are other characteristics of a good brush such as having the right “stiffness” (a floppy brush is useless for cutting in), the bristles forming a straight line (a jagged bristle line will not cut in a straight line no matter how talented the painter may be), the ability to clean up after use, as well as “pick up” and “release” the paint.
There are some brush manufacturers you can count o for quality brushes, as couple of my favorite brush manufacturers are: Purdy Brush Co. and Wooster Brush Co.
How to Paint Straight Lines
Search This Site
 | ||||
Custom Search
| ||||
The
Concourse eStore
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
SM
Painting Tips and Advice
| ||||
Painting and Decorating Concourse
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
Our "terms of use" governs your use of our website; by using our website, you accept this disclaimer in full. If you disagree with any part of our "terms of use", do not use our website.
| ||||
