If you want to stop the bleeding through of the paint, you need to do the following: Make your straight line with painters tape. Then paint a layer of your base color over the edge of the painter's tape and a little into where it is that you are going to eventually put your top coat of paint. Let this dry. After it is dry, feel free to paint your top coat. When you put a layer of your base color down, it creates a seal between the wall and painter's tape that will stop all bleeding. When you are done, all you need to do is pull the tape off at a 90 degree angle from the wall, and you will have a crisp, bleed free, paint line.
There is a special tape that you can use to do this. It is sold in Lowes or other home improvement stores. If you are using regular tape, it probably will bleed through. But go to a home improvement store and ask for painter's tape and this should help you achieve that definite line.
Kathy_c Kathy, I believe you are RIGHT. I just painted 3 horizontal stripes in my client's boy's room. Used Ben Moore colours 9" bottom stripe in 2067-49 Blue Lupis, 6" middle stripe in 2146-30 Split Pea (lime green) and 3" top stripe in 2156-30 Jack O' Lantern orange. Used 1 1/2" blue tape between the colours. But the paint bleed everywhere!!! What a disaster!!!! Tomorrow I have to fix the mess. I think if I would have done as you suggested I wouldn't have had any problem. So the next time I'm going to follow your suggestion. Unfortunately I found this answer tonight after doing all the work. Tomorrow my strategy will be to take a clear sewing ruler and hold it over the colour of the stripe just at the edge. Then putting only a little paint on the brush (of course so hopefully it won't run and bleed onto the colour I'll slowly paint the base colour. I will probaly have to do this step twice to paint two coats over the colours since they are quite bold. I just hope the paint doesn't run again. Each time I lift the clear ruler I will have to wipe the paint off with a wet rag and then dry it off. It will take me longer to do this then it took me to paint the stripes that's for sure. I learned a valuable lesson from this mistake. Actually this morning I did a test in my own laundry since I didn't want to creat a mess at my clients. But I used a very light colour on white and I didn't see any bleeding....so that's why I just used the tape. But either our wall was a lot smoother than my clients or their might have been some bleeding but since the colour was only a little darker than the white it didn't show.
3m makes the best painters tape. You will recognize it, because it is the color blue. But, since your walls are lightly textured, you may have a problem keeping the paint from bleeding under the tape, because you really need to have smooth walls for painting stripes. However, you can run your finger up and down the edges of the tape with a firm pressure to adhere it as securely as possible to the wall. You can go back over any areas that bled by freehanding it with a small paint brush, using the original paint color of the wall.
