

That’s my 3-year-old with his protective eye wear and toolbox 🙂
I searched Pinterest, I Googled “painted stairs,” but I never found anything that knocked my socks off. My daughter wants to write words on the risers. We’ll see. For now I am only committing to do a rainbow-ish look. I found unopened green and blue exterior paint cans in the garage, and I figured basement stairs could use the extra durability, so I started there. I bought a can of pink and called it a day.
How to get my look:


I decided to paint the stripes to “curve”. First I had to tape off my plan. My landing is not square, so to make it square I painted one faux green stair. You see what looks like a green stair in this pic? Nope, that’s actually just paint on the landing.I honestly didn’t give the whole process much thought, just started taping, so please don’t think this is hard to do. There are certain things you have to take into consideration when using tape. If I just put the tape down and painted all my stripes, I would be left with gray stripes the width of the tape between each color. This was not the look I was going for. You also can’t paint two stripes next to each other at the same time because there’s no where to put the tape in between. The only solution is to tape twice. This was the part that was a pain in the butt because I waited 3 days between paint stages, so I could safely put tape on the paint with less worry of it pulling up.
The first piece I put down was the one in the middle, starting at the upper left corner in the picture. Then I worked out toward both sides. Remember I had to paint in two stages. Stage 1 gets painted first (of course!) and the tape is on the outside of the stripe (because you are painting inside). The stripes that seem narrower will be saved for stage 2, I marked them with a small piece of tape to remind myself NOT to paint there. They only look narrower now because the tape is INSIDE the painted area. This tape will be removed before I paint stage 2 and I will have to re-tape before painting.
Tip: Because you are constantly going back and forth with 3 colors, you need 3 paint brushes. You are painting these stairs over several days (due to drying time) and will repeatedly need the brushes. So when you are finished painting for the moment, just put the brush in a sandwich bag and stick it in the refrigerator. It’s good to go the next time you need it.
7) Remove the tape and let the paint dry for at least 3 days. (That random bit of blue near the corner was just me trying to see if I could freehand the stripes. Nope.)
8) Tape over what you painted in stage 1 to mark the outside edge of stage 2. I switched to Frogtape because my blue painters tape was not giving me very good results. You can only do non-overlapping sections together. I started by taping off the outside stripes.
10) Remove tape and let dry. (Sorry no more pics of each of these steps.) Tape off one of the remaining areas. Paint, remove tape, let dry. Repeat on the last remaining area and touch up where needed.11) Optional: Cover with water-based floor polyurethane
Finally finished!!
How absolutely awesome are these!!! You need to link up to some parties to show off your outstanding skills!!! Seriously!!! Great work!!!
Thank you for the kind words! And thanks for the kick in the butt!! I linked the 3 Hour Patio post last week to a bunch of parties and it was featured on House of Hepworths and Someday I’ll Learn! I can’t wait to see if the stairs get featured too!!
House of Hepworths brought me to your blog. It has been bookmarked 🙂
You’re right about one thing: these stairs are totally awesome! How festive and colorful! I bet they make the whole family smile… 🙂
hugs x
Crystelle
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These are so neat! I wish I had stairs to paint. I love them!
Ha! I’m sure you’ve got plenty of other things to paint. I feel like I always do! 😉
These stairs are great!! Very Funky 🙂
Thanks!
Very cute. I love colorful things and I like your landing idea. I would totally do something like this.
Thanks! You should go for it!
No way! These are amazing! I love all the bright colors!
Thanks Jenn! I was trying to entice my kids to go down to the basement more… didn’t really work. 🙁