How To Paint Wood Furniture In 6 Simple Steps
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Whether it’s the first time or the millionth time that you’ve painted wood furniture, it can feel intimidating. Or if you need help identifying if your furniture is real wood or fake, you can start here.
This guide breaks down the 6 steps from start to finish to give your wood furniture new life with the proper prep work, and a fresh coat of paint.
If you want to stain your furniture instead of painting it, check out this article on how to stain wood furniture the easiest way.
Paint Wood Furniture in 6 Simple Steps
1. To paint wood furniture, you first need to scrub and clean your furniture really well. Get all the dirt and grime and nasties from the previous owner, even if you think it already looks clean. I use old Tupperware and fill it with warm soapy water. Use your shop towel, dunk it in the soap bucket and squeeze. Now use the rag to scrub the furniture. This is the best way to not mess with the stain or finish, and get it nice and clean before you paint wood furniture.
2. Is your furniture already painted? First, you will need to strip off all of the old paint with some sort of chemical stripper. Citristrip, Kwik Stripper, or something similar will do the trick. Get as much off as possible, you may have to do a couple of rounds. This can be messy so be sure to use a dropcloth or somewhere that it won’t matter to get sloppy. If your wood furniture doesn’t have paint, you can skip this step.
3. Once the stripper is all gone along with all the old paint/stain on the furniture, you’re ready to sand! You don’t need to go crazy on this step, because we aren’t getting down to the natural wood. All that we need is a clean surface with just a few scruffs to help the paint adhere. You can do this with an electric sander and fine grit, or by hand with a grit between 100-200.
During the sanding process you may realize you’ve made a mistake, and the furniture is not real wood, but instead a pressed board with laminate wood wrap. This is very common, especially some furniture pieces that seem so heavy and seemingly wood, once you sand you can determine what you’re working with. This guide can help you continue the process of painting laminate furniture.
4. Prime the furniture. Don’t skip this step! This is going to hide any bleeding of color through the paint, which happens often when painting wood. It will also keep the paint in place for years to come. When priming wood I go with a shellac primer. Shellac primer blocks the colors, as well as any lingering smells in the wood (think, old cigarette smell). I use this primer right now, which can be found at Walmart or Lowes. But this one is another great option as well. Both are strong enough to block colors, stains, and smells.
5. Paint the furniture whichever color you choose. There are a few options for painting furniture. I stick to a Sherwin Williams paint if I can (ex-employee over here) because I trust their quality of paint more than anything else. Duration paint is one of my favorite paints! Selecting the sheen is less important when you have great quality paint. That’s not to say that I won’t use chalk paint now and again either.
- Chalk paint can be great for projects that you don’t want to spend a lot of time prepping. In the case of laminate furniture, it’s a great option. Chalk paint can be thick, so when painting with it I use a spray water bottle to spray my brush lightly with water. This helps to thin the paint just enough to help it spread easier and lay nicer. When it spreads smoother, you’ll see fewer brush strokes and the paint can go further.
- If using interior paint for your piece of laminate furniture, chances are you will need fewer coats, and less tampering to get the paint to cooperate. The difference between painting with chalk paint and interior paint is night and day once I tried interior paint, and I rarely go back to chalk unless I feel like it makes sense for the project. Interior paint such as Sherwin Williams Duration goes on smooths, stands up to high traffic, and can be sealed up with a polycrylic just like chalk paint or stain.
6. Seal with Polycrylic Minwax. You can choose whichever sheen you prefer. Let the polycrylic cure for a full 24 hours, and then you’re done!
