I have painted in houses before so I’m not totally inexperienced, but one thing I am a little unfamiliar with is painter’s tape. Why do you need it?

Kay, who has never painted anything in a house before, is pretty certain that every painter in Switzerland uses tape (even though our painters clearly did not use it anywhere in the flat) and for as long as we have talked about painting the house, he has talked about how we have to do it properly and tape. As we prepare to paint, I’ve been researching more about the pros and cons of using tape and what it might mean for us.

Pros of using tape:

• Clean line
• Straight line
• Professionals do it (is that a real reason?)

Cons of using tape:

• Pulling tape off dry paint may pull paint up from wall
• Pulling tape off wet paint may touch or smear wet paint
• Pulling tape off wet paint might cause wet tape to get paint on non-painted surfaces
• Color can go under tape and ruin the straight line (this is my biggest fear)
• Tape could pull wallpaper off wall (we have pretty flimsy, fragile wallpaper)
• Takes a long time to put up and remove tape

There are actually enough bad things that can happen with tape that I kind of want to just paint the walls when Kay is gone and tape up what I want, but not everything. But Kay thinks the lines will look like shit if I don’t use tape and that I’ll get paint on the ceiling.

Do you use tape when you paint? Where do you use it?