If you have a steady hand, you may not need masking tape to protect hardware and surfaces next to those being painted. Most people, however, find tape helpful for keeping surfaces from being splattered and for keeping a crisp edge between two paint types or colors.

If you are using a brush against the tape, use tape with good adhesion rather than all-purpose tape to prevent paint from seeping in. There is a type of low-tack tape (often called painter’s tape) that can fasten to delicate surfaces without causing damage when it is pulled away.

See the detailed instructions below:

1. Put garbage bags over hanging fixtures, and fasten the bags to the fixtures’ cords with twist ties or masking tape. Drape furniture at the center of the room.
2. To protect the floor, run 2-inch-wide masking or painter’s tape along the floor’s edge, and then secure the dropcloth to the band of tape. A disposable paper dropcloth works fine where you are painting only a wall or trim.
3. To mask adjacent surfaces, run 2-inch painter’s tape along the edges of the surface that will not be painted, and secure masking strips to it. At the baseboard of the wall, lay the tape along the upper edge to form a ledge to catch paint drips. Cover trim with painter’s tape. Tape plastic sheeting to larger wall surfaces such as wainscoting.
4. Cover hard-to-remove hardware with masking tape. Take off easily removed hardware, put each item and its screws in a separate plastic bag, and note the sequence of the pieces.
5. Mask window glass by pressing masking tape in place with a putty knife to seal the edges. Remove the tape while the paint is still tacky—about half an hour after painting with latex paint and about two hours after applying alkyd paint.