How to Stencil Letters That Come Out Straight

The baseline is everything

Letters look straight when they share a baseline — the invisible line they all sit on. The reliable way to give them one: run a strip of low-tack masking tape along your surface, dead level, and sit the bottom edge of every stencil sheet on that tape edge as you work along. On a wall, set the tape with a spirit level or a cheap laser line; on a board, measure up from the bottom edge at both ends. What you must never do is trust your eye across a whole word — eyes drift, always downhill to the right, and you won't see it until the paint's dry.

Our letter stencils print each character on its own A4 sheet with a consistent margin below the letter, which is precisely so the sheet edge can ride a tape line and keep the baseline true for you.

Space by eye, not by ruler

Here's the counterintuitive rule that separates good lettering from awkward lettering: equal measured gaps look unequal. Letters have shapes — an A slopes away, an L opens to the right, an O curves in on both sides — so a 30mm gap between H and N looks tighter than the same 30mm between A and V. Typographers call the fix optical spacing: you space by how it looks, not what the ruler says.

In practice: print all your letters, lay the word out dry on the floor or tape it loosely to the wall, and stand back. Nudge gaps until every pair looks evenly spaced — trust the impression, not the tape measure. Then mark each sheet's position with pencil ticks before any paint appears. Pairs that always need closing up: A next to V or W, L next to T, T next to o in mixed sizing, and anything beside a full-height straight letter like H or N usually needs opening slightly.

Centring a word: middle out, never left to right

Starting at the left and hoping is how "WELCOME" ends up crammed against a door frame. Instead: find the centre of your surface and mark it. Then find the centre of your word — the middle letter for odd-length words (the C in WELCOME), the gap between the two middle letters for even ones. Place the middle at the mark, then work outward, adding letters alternately left and right using your dry-layout spacing marks. The word ends up balanced no matter what surface it's on.

For two-line layouts — a name over a date, say — centre each line separately and keep the gap between lines about half a letter-height. Numbers for dates are in the number stencils set, drawn to match the letters.

Painting letters cleanly

1. One letter at a time, fully dry technique. Load the brush, dab it nearly dry on kitchen roll, pounce straight down. Letters have long edges — long edges are where wet paint wicks and bleeds.
2. Press the counters flat. The bridged centres of A, B, O, P, R are little flaps that lift. Fingertip pressure just ahead of the brush keeps them down; a whisper of repositionable spray adhesive on the stencil back is even better.
3. Peel while tacky, then reposition. Lift each stencil as soon as the letter's dabbed, wipe if paint has crept onto the stencil face, and move along the tape line to the next position.
4. Match your sizes. If you're mixing letters and numbers, print everything at the same scale percentage. Our resizing guide covers scaling a whole word up or down together.

Five mistakes that ruin painted lettering

1. Eyeballing the baseline. The drift is invisible until it's permanent. Tape line, always.
2. Measuring the gaps. Mechanically equal spacing reads as uneven. Space by eye with a dry layout first.
3. Starting from the left. Words end up off-centre. Middle out.
4. Wet brush on long edges. Letters bleed worse than any other design. Nearly dry, straight down.
5. Skipping the scrap test. One rehearsal letter on cardboard tells you your paint load, your pressure and your spacing rhythm. The complete making guide covers the full test ritual.

Everything you need, free

The full A–Z and 0–9 are free A4 downloads, drawn with stencil bridges built in and consistent baselines across the set:

Common questions