One of the most challenging piece of any faux finish job is making the areas near the trim, ceilings and corners look like the rest of the project.  I recently saw a homeowner faux job with a 2" gap around the trim, ceiling and in the corners...my eye was immediately drawn to these areas and it looked horrible! 

How do I avoid this?

The first step in this process is to tape the edges.

I usually tape the edges of the trim, ceiling and in the corners of adjacent walls.

This allows me to take your color right up to the line and creates a professional looking job. 

I Always use a lowtack tape! 

Blue Tape by 3M

If you use yellow masking tape or any higher tack tape it may pull the paint off and you will be stuck with a larger job than you anticipated! 

I use 3M's blue tape.

Even a low tack tape has the ability to pull the underlying paint off. 

This can happen for several reasons.

1) If the room you are working in is cold it can affect the glue on the tape making it more "sticky" than it was meant to be.

2) The longer you leave the tape on the stronger the bond becomes.  I usually tape 4 feet ahead of me and remove it when i am done with that section.  This ensures i have no problems. 

3)Sometimes the bond of the coat of paint is weak and no matter what you do the paint will pull off.  This can happen because the substrate was not properly prepared.  If I am doing faux on the walls only and did not paint the ceiling or trim I always have the customer sign off stating I am not responsible for paint adhesion issues.  I put a clause in the contract that covers this issue.

The blue tape allows you to get close to the trim but you dont want to apply liberal amounts of product near trim or ceiling lines and ill discuss why in this article.