Layering Paint For Dynamic Distressing
- Hailey Newby
- May 18, 2016
- 3 min read
You might not be able to tell this by looking at my home, but I love colour. I especially love bright and bold showstopping pieces of furniture. Give me a fuschia sofa or cherry red bookcase any day. I like light and airy decor for my home, since I find it calming and it makes me smile, but there's a rebellious side of me that wants to paint the town orange and hot pink and teal. That's why I love injecting that one-two punch of great design and striking colour when refinishing a piece of furniture.
Here is a recently refinished dresser that I am absolutely in love with. This dresser gave me a hard time in the beginning (inspiring not one, but two blog posts), but I love the final results. If you want to recreate this technique, I'll show you how.
This was what I started with. It needed quite a few repairs, and was originally destined to be a white dresser. But as fate would have it, that wasn't going to work out.
This is the next stage. The decoupaged top was scraped off, but the white paint was left on. You can choose to paint your piece white to prime it or leave it as is. For the next step, my white base helped since my colours were very bright and wouldn't have shown up as well against a dark colour. Depending on the colour combination you're looking to go for, priming your piece is optional.
Start layering your colours on top. I used homemade chalk paint and applied it randomly because I wanted the different colours to show through when I started distressing, as if the piece has been repainted and refinished many times. It saved me from having to distress each layers of paint individually.
The next coat was a soft yellow and was also applied randomly. These are my base colours. When you start distressing your top coat, the yellow, orange, white and brown will be what shows through. You can apply as many colours as you want to make the final piece fun and vivid.
Apply your top coat. I recommend choosing your base colours and your top coat from opposite ends of the colour wheel, which will create a high impact and dynamic look. Here I painted the dresser turquoise and dry brushed some white paint over top for texture.
Then just get your orbital sander or sandpaper out and start distressing! Here are a few close ups.
How amazing does that look?! You can see all the layers coming through, and the random orange and yellow looks really amazing when sanded down. Imagine having a bright mint green peeking through a magenta side table? Or robin's egg blue showing through a coral pink vanity?
Make sure to distress areas that would get the most wear; edges, corners, any raised or decorative pieces, where the hardware would be etc.
Since I used chalk paint I had to seal the dresser, and since this piece will be for sale, I applied two coats of polycrylic and two coats of furniture wax, making it impervious to almost anything. It really adds great dimension and luster to the colours.
Last but not least I spray painted the original hardware (which I liked, because they looked retro) a shiny metallic gold, put them back on and voila!
Be creative and just have fun! If you've every wanted to try something bold, or are a seasoned colour pro, you can't go wrong with a thrifted dresser and a little bit of paint! What colours would you paint an accent dresser?
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