Painting a stripe

The genreal advice is to take the tape off when the paint is wet to avoid lifing off the edge of the now dry paint. I think the problem you have has in the past is the paint 'leaking' under the edge of the masking tape - bound to happen with a combination to paper masking and a water based paint - eg emulsion. You can either use a tape which sticks down well at the edges, or a thicker possibly oil based paint.

I have done this successfully with 'gloss' type paints.

If you look at the conventional masking tape under a magnifier you will see its all bitty with flax,the most suitable is easy peel packing tape(light brown in colour) and about 2 or 3 inches wide this has a perfect cut edge but must be peeled of straight after the paint has almost dried.

Thanks Chris

That was exactly the problem, seeping or listing when dry, good advice thanks

Phil

Also use/borrow a 360° beam self levelling laser thingy, the type on a tripod. I placed it in centre of my sons room and it placed a nice straight red line round the room. Not suitable in old wonky houses as my mate found out the line was 2cm higher at one end of the room as the floor was not level. As for fixing masking tape I tried

1. Just following the red line, quite hard as your hands/body/head gets in the way.
2. Using the laser line to tape a 1m rule to the wall and using this edge to align the tape to. Quite easy.
3. Just apply the tape overlapping red line, then use the 1m rule, red line and very sharp knife to carefully trim the tape.

In all cases I used a wallpaper seam roller to "pummell" the tape to the wall to prevent paint seeping under.I also went round painting the edges of the masking tape first, in the direction so as as to not force paint inder the tape and then applied the main bulk of paint. Remove tape when paint is wet though in my some tape did not get removed until paint was dry and the edge did not appear to suffer to much.