How do you evenly paint stripes on your wall?

On a design show there was this room painted in three complimentary colors in perfectly even horizontal stripes and I don't know how they did that. I mean, I know you can put tape up but how to you make it perfectly straight? And wouldn't there be a blank spot where you had the tape?





(Sorry if this is a dumb question, I've never painted before)How do you evenly paint stripes on your wall?
It is not a dumb question!





Ok, this is how it is typically done. They generally use either a laser level to put the tape on a level, straight line or they use chalk line to 'snap' a chalk line onto the wall and then place the tape.





You would generally tape off the top stripe first with blue painters tape(it doesn't pull the paint off when it dries!). Then paint the first stripe, however far you want it. You could even have the area for the bottom stripe already taped off and paint it. Let both stripes dry, then peel off the blue tape. Then come back and put fresh blue tape to get a straight edge between both of the other stripes(you'll actually be painting the third color, slightly over the edge of the other two. Then when it is dry and you peel off the tape, you will have three nice, straight, horizontal stripes.





Here is a link to a site that has a pic:





http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/hi_paintin鈥?/a>





How do you evenly paint stripes on your wall?
you could use a ';snap line';...


A snap line is a roll of string with chalk on it[avail at hardware store] %26amp; you would thumb-tack it to the top of the wall,run it to the floor in a straight line[use a level if necessary] snap it[gentle pull away from the wall %26amp; release] %26amp; it will leave a straight chalk line as a guide
overroll the center color first. let dry .then use a level and lightly draw lines for both the top and bottom stripe, using a colored pencil slightly darker than the color you are painting. then tape those level lines off and paint your final two colors. walaa
What you can do is put painters tape on the spots you don't want to paint, then just paint over them. When you peel off the painters tape, there will be a blank spot for you to paint on.