How To Paint Clean Edges

When you're painting a room, do you struggle to cut in a clean edge?  I'm going to share my tips for painting a room quickly with clean lines and no tape!

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I am not a professional painter, and a professional may give you completely different advice than I'm going to give you, but this technique works for me and it works well.  I actually had a professional painter come in to paint my two story foyer and he asked who I had hired to paint my kitchen because they did a great job.  I didn't hire anyone to paint my kitchen.  I did it myself using the techniques below!

The first and most important step is to get a good brush.  Fortunately, good doesn't necessarily mean expensive.  This is the exact brush I use, and it's just a little over 10 bucks.  I've been using this same brush for all my trim work for years.  Two important things that make this brush perfect for trim work: 1) the angled edge.  2) the 2″ width.  If for some reason you can't find this exact brush, make sure you get a 2″ angled brush that's made to be used with interior paint.

Next, you need a paint trim cup.  I've used this one and this one and I like them both.  When you fill your trim cup with paint, don't over fill it.

I always start by dipping the brush into my paint cup and dragging the paint off both sides of the brush.  I do this a couple times just to make sure my brush is evenly coated.  You're only dipping your bristles about an inch deep into the paint.

Now we're ready to start painting.  Dip your brush into the paint, then when you lift your brush out of the cup, drag one side against the edge all the way out.  So you're removing the paint from one side of the brush.

Now with the paint filled side of the brush facing the wall, paint a short, downward stroke about a quarter to a half inch away from the edge.  Your stroke should be about 1-2 inches long, and this is just to unload some of the paint.

Now you can paint your edge.  I start right above my downward stroke.  I'm a lefty, so I always go in a right to left direction.  I start my stroke just a smidge away from the ceiling, then as I stroke to the left I'll go up until I'm right where the wall meets the ceiling, then straight to the left.

Once you've gone a few inches, remove the brush from the wall.  You're now going to feather out that line you just painted.  I do this by using short downward arching strokes.  Once you're done, if your edge line doesn't look like it's fully coated, reload your brush and go over it again and feather it down again.

Now continue those 3 steps: A short downward stroke to unload some paint; a slow, steady stroke at the ceiling edge; then feather it down.

Before long you'll be able to do this without even thinking about it, and you'll be trimming out rooms faster than ever.  I took a couple pictures of the edge I had just painted in the photos above, just to give you an idea of what it looked like when I was finished.  (In some of the pictures, it looks like there's a white line just below the ceiling line.  That's actually just where the wet paint was reflecting the light.)

A couple tips for painting the corners:

I paint my edge like normal as far into the corners as possible, then I'll flip my brush over and paint an edge in the opposite direction.  At this point there should only be a small section right in the corner that hasn't been painted yet.  I use the longest bristles only of my angled brush to carefully get into the corner and cut it in.

I hope you find these tips helpful!  If you have your own tips for painting a room, I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

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Source: https://canarystreetcrafts.com/how-to-cut-in/

Posted by: smithsursee.blogspot.com

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