Paint Laminate Furniture
Painting furniture can be a great way to reinvigorate a worn, aging piece or customize a piece with a unique color scheme. When painting solid wood furniture, the process is fairly straightforward, as any old finishes can simply be sanded away. However, many pieces of modern, inexpensive furniture are made from laminate, which means a thin veneer of wood or plastic is glued onto a base of particleboard. It can be trickier to paint laminate furniture, but if you keep a few considerations in mind, your furniture will end up with a quality finish in the color of your choice. We'll show you how to do it.
Contents
Steps
Sanding and Priming
- Disassemble your furniture. If the piece of furniture you will be painting has drawers, doors, or other components that can be removed, you will generally get the best results if you disassemble the pieces before painting. This will make it easier to prevent drips and to get into the corners where the pieces fit together.
- Take your time with this step. A lot of laminate furniture is not build with disassembly in mind, and particle board can be damaged fairly easily. Don't force anything. If two pieces refuse to come apart, paint them carefully in place.
- Sand the furniture with fine-grit sandpaper. Paint sticks best to slightly rough surfaces. To improve the adhesion of the primer and paint, you'll need to sand the entire surface of the piece with fine-grit sandpaper. Be careful not to sand so vigorously that you tear through the laminate into the particleboard beneath.
- You can also use a random-orbit sander, which you can attach sandpaper to. Because you're sanding a laminate surface, it's important to not over sand, so just go over it lightly. It might be helpful if you sand the bulk of the surface with a sander and go over the corners and the sides by hand.
- Make sure you sand all areas evenly. You want to get a good, sanded surface to work with, or the paint that you apply to the laminate will start to bubble. This is a clear sign that you haven't sanded enough.
- Wipe away the sanding dust. Go over the laminate surface with a vacuum. Next, use a tack cloth to thoroughly clean the piece of furniture of any dust left over by the vacuum.
- Sanding dust can easily mix into your primer or paint and mar the finish of the furniture.
- Apply a coat of primer. After sanding, you can prime the furniture with any type of interior primer. The primer is best applied with a high-quality polyester-bristled brush, but can also be applied using a disposable foam brush. Apply the primer in long, smooth strokes, overlapping the previous stroke slightly, and aim for as thin and smooth a coat as possible.
- A primer will help the color of your paint stand out, as well as give the paint a better surface to latch onto. Even so, be prepared to color with several coats of paint before you achieve the consistency and color desired.
- Allow the primer to dry. The primer will likely be dry to the touch within an hour or so, but it is best to wait a full day for the primer to set before painting. Waiting this long will help increase the durability and scratch resistance of the finished piece of furniture.
Painting
- Paint the laminate furniture. You can use nearly any type of paint to paint laminate furniture, but latex-based interior paints are ideal.
- Apply the paint as you did the primer, using long, smooth strokes. Use a combination of a paint roller and a brush: hit the long even surfaces with your roller, and hit the edges and corners with a brush.
- Apply as many as four coats of paint to achieve the final finish you desire. Wait a day between coats, spot-sanding areas with bubbles as needed. Multiple thin coats will always provide a better finish than a single thick coat.
- Reassemble the furniture. When the paint has dried thoroughly (at least one full day), you can put the pieces of the furniture back together.
- Again, be slow and deliberate when reassembling the furniture: particle board, especially screw and cam holes, have a way of crumbling if treated at all harshly or forcibly.
- With a small brush, touch up any areas where the paint gets scratched.
- For best results, you may want to allow to paint to set up for a few days before subjecting the furniture to use.
Tips
- Plastic drop cloths or scraps of cardboard are helpful for containing paint drips and spills. Avoid using newspaper, however, as the thin paper tends to stick onto the painted furniture when wet.
- Any drips that have dried into the paint's finish can be scraped away with a utility knife and then painted over.
- If the laminate furniture will be subjected to heavy or abusive usage, consider applying a clear sealant coat like polyurethane over the paint to protect the furniture.
Things You'll Need
- Fine-grit sandpaper
- Tack cloth
- Primer
- Polyester-bristled brush
- Soap
- Water
- Latex paint
- Foam brush
- Drop cloth
- Utility knife
- Polyurethane (optional)
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