How to Paint Stripes on Your Front Porch

Y’all don’t even know how excited I get about black and white stripes and today I want to share my striped concrete front porch makeover with you. Painting crisp black and white stripes on a concrete floor can be a little tricky but with my tips and tricks on how to paint stripes on your front porch, you will get clean and perfect results. Trust me, it’s a lot easier than you think.

How to Paint Stripes on Your Front Porch

The reason I finally decided to have striped concrete at our entrance is that the concrete on our front porch had become bad after living here for 16 years. The yearly pressure washing didn’t help and neither did any type of bleach cleaner anymore. Not to mention that most of the homes in our neighborhood look like ours and I wanted to make my curb appeal stick out from the rest of the homes.

Painting Concrete Porch Supply List:

• one can of white and one can of black Olympic Rescue It and cleaner which I purchased at Lowes and I decided on this paint because it is tintable and you can choose from a large variety of colors. (UPDATE: we’ve had this porch painted for two years now and the color is holding up great!)
• a good bristle brush (very important to get into all the textured parts of the concrete)
• metal paint tray (I like lining mine with garbage bags which makes it easier for cleanup and covering the roller between coats and you can read more about my painting tips and tricks HERE)
• painters tape
• rollers made for really textured surfaces (HERE), roller frame (HERE) and an extension handle (HERE)
• a large ruler or straight piece of wood molding
• measuring tape

 

Step-by-step Porch Painting Instructions:

1. Cleaning the concrete: I used a pressure washer in combination with the cleaner to make sure I really removed all the dirt and grime. I brushed it on according to their instructions and then pressure washed the entire porch and small walkway.
To be honest, though I felt like the cleaner was a waste of my money, not because it’s a step you should skip. Definitely not! It’s because it smelled like straight up bleach which it also proofed to be because it ruined the bottom of my sweatpants after pressure washing and you might just be able to buy bleach from the grocery store which is much cheaper to prep your surface with. So you can be the judge of this step whether you want to clean with the manufacturers recommended cleaner or just standard bleach. Regardless of what you use please be careful with yourself and the surrounding plants.

2. Let the cleaned porch dry completely before moving on!

Here is another view of the porch after I cleaned it. Lots of stains and discolorations.

3. I taped areas around the siding that needed to be taped and then painted the permitter of the textured concrete porch white with the hard bristle brush.

Here you can see the painted perimeter:

4. After that it was time to roll out the first coat of white paint with the roller and paint. Remember I mentioned that I line my tray with a garbage bag so I can either keep the roller from drying out when I take a break or for easy clean up after painting.

5. I waited 4 hours and then rolled on the second coat. It’s very important that you pick the right weather for this which it certainly was for me. There was barely any wind, so no dirt and leaves got blown into my wet paint and the temperature was just what they recommend on the paint can. Always make sure you read the manufacturers recommendations on the paint can before starting a project.

6. After the second coat dried, it was time to figured out the width of the stripes. I marked them and drew them in with a pencil and my large piece of straight molding which served as a ruler for me (see below photo)

7. I taped my lines with painters tape. The stripes that get painted with the darker color are sometimes hard to distinguish so I like to make sure to mark them with an X to avoid any mistakes later.

8. And this is where things get interesting and my favorite painting trick comes in place. A long long time before I started blogging I went to the library and read painting and home improvement books and came across this tip in a book. I can’t remember which book this was though. I wish I could.

The trick is that paint always bleeds under tape. Have you ever noticed that? No matter how hard you push down the painters tape, when you pull it off the lines are a jagged. Even if you use frog tape who’s company claims that this won’t happen. So let the paint bleed underneath the tape!

Say what? Is she nuts? No I’m not… let it bleed with the same color as the base coat which means that I paint over the line with the same color as the underlying color of paint which in my case was the white. That seals the painters tape and the bleeding isn’t visible because it is the same color!!! Get it?

See in the photo below? I painted over the tape in the areas where the black will hit the tape and have it’s line.

9. Then when that bleeding and sealing line is dry paint over it with your next paint color which is my black stripe.

10. Make sure to roll on a second coat of black paint.

11. Pull of the painters tape and admire your crisp, clean and beautiful striped concrete front porch.

Let me show you a close up. You can barely see where the white paint bled through. Can you?

Here is my before and after of the porch:

 

overview of …

My tips and tricks for painting concrete and stripes:

• always read the paint manufacturers instructions before starting a project
• thoroughly clean the concrete and let it dry
• pick the right weather (no wind, rain or cold temperatures)
• let the painters tape bleed with the bottom base coat to avoid jagged edges
• pull the painters tape off before the second coat of stripe color is completely dry

 

If you do my trick, you get an ultra crisp line every time. No matter what tape you use and even on very textured concrete like mine.

Oh and while I was at it, I also removed my lighting because it was dirty and bleached out and gave it a black spray paint makeover. I simple used black semi-gloss Rustoleum metal spray paint (HERE) after I thoroughly cleaned the light.

The porch turned out exactly how I wanted. Can you see my newly painted black light too? I also have on my list to paint the front door a different color. I think I will use a bright green, similar to that bush which I still want to rip out and replace with a smaller version of the same bush. It’s so overgrown. I can’t see the kids playing when I sit on the porch anymore and I hate that.

I had picked just the right time to paint because now all those pretty blooms are shedding and falling on the porch. It would have been a disaster had it all fallen into the wet paint.

 

similar black planters HERE | HERE | HERE

similar boxwood balls HERE, HERE, HERE and with black pot HERE | bench HERE

You can find a very similar door knocker HERE.

Update:

I painted the front door and you can see the new color by clicking HERE.

 

 

Check out my other related posts:

 

{A reader painted her porch black and white according to my tutorial and you can see more photos HERE}

Our tropical front porch (click HERE):

Here is the porch decked out for Christmas (click HERE for tour)

And the porch with Halloween spirit (click HERE)

This all matches my cabana patio makeover post I did last year for Home Depot. (click HERE and HERE to see the post)

And I recently found this fabulous umbrella for our back patio at Walmart for $50!!! Not kidding, it’s amazing and even tilts. They are out of stock online (click HERE to see it) but have several left at our local Walmart. It’s from the Better Homes & Garden collection. Check anyways because you just never know and they might have it back in stock. Sometimes you can order online and pick up in store too.

 

Some other black and white striped umbrellas HERE and HERE

Would you consider painting your porch in a bold stripe and do you like the porch as much as I do?

I’ll keep you updated to see how it wears, ok? So far it’s kept it’s looks for two years and we couldn’t be happier.

Tschüß,