Awesome Ways To Give New Life to Old Furniture

ECOS Paints 10/13/2020
Awesome Ways To Give New Life to Old Furniture

Furniture is one of the major costs for any redesign project. New furniture prices can tower at thousands of dollars for an entire set, making it difficult for most homeowners to replace their furniture when they want to redo a space. However, just because you don’t buy new furniture, that doesn’t mean you can’t totally change your old furniture’s look. By finding ways to give new life to old furniture, you’ll make it look like you’ve got a unique, brand new furniture set in your house.

Painting

Often, one of the challenges of designing a new room with your old furniture is having to work around the colors that the old furniture brings to the table. If you don’t like the color of old furniture, why not change it? Painting furniture pieces is a simple, low-effort way to make sure your old furniture doesn’t stick out against the new color scheme, and it will help hide any old scuffs and scratches.

Single Color

The easiest way to incorporate paint is to simply paint the piece with one single color. Painting the piece a more neutral color such as black or grey will make it easier to incorporate the item into the room and reuse it again later. Having a piece that works in a wide variety of color settings also makes it easier to resell the item down the line if you wish. Another option is to create a statement piece by choosing a bolder, more vibrant color such as red or purple. This will help create a focal point in the space.

Multiple Colors

Another option that is still low effort but adds more visual interest is painting a furniture piece with multiple colors. If you have a shelf, this may mean painting the outside one color and the inside another. If you are painting a dresser, you may paint the drawers a different color from the body of the dresser. You can also do this with a simpler, neutral color scheme such as white and brown, or with multiple, brighter colors that draw the eye.

Designs

If you want to make a bolder statement, you can turn your furniture into a canvas by applying your own artistic designs. Painting designs on furniture can be as simple and elegant as painting vines and leaves along the side of a bookshelf, or as bold and dynamic as painting brightly colored flowers on an end table. Painting bright patterns, phrases, or other whimsical drawings on furniture also works great for a kid’s bedroom.

The beauty of painting furniture is that it makes your items completely unique. It allows you to tailor your furniture pieces to fit your room and style, and you’ll know for a fact that nobody will be able to find a similar piece anywhere else.

Refinishing

Sometimes, you want to change the color of wooden furniture without losing its original grain pattern. An alternative to painting wooden furniture is refinishing it. Refinishing furniture helps change the look of the item without changing its natural grain. It also makes the furniture piece look brand new and makes the piece last longer by protecting it from new scratches and spills in the future.

It’s also still possible to add designs to your wooden furniture if you are using stain. You can create a silhouette image or text using a different color wood stain than the rest of the wood. You can also create a negative space design by painting over a cutout image, or you can use multiple types of wood stain to create different patterns and shapes. Wood stain dries darker the longer you leave it on the wood, and some people play with this effect to create shaded images on top of tables and shelves that are reminiscent of charcoal drawings.

Reupholstering

Oftentimes, the furniture pieces that are most likely clash with your home’s new color scheme are also the most difficult to repaint or refinish effectively. We are referring to cloth-based furniture such as dining room chairs and sofas. Rather than repainting or refinishing these items, you can cover them with a wide range of fabric patterns and colors. Reupholstering involves removing the fabric covering of a piece and replacing it with new fabric. This effectively makes the sofa or armchair look like an entirely different, customized piece of furniture.

Distressing

Sometimes, the trick isn’t to make the old furniture look new—it’s to make the old furniture look even older. Distressing a furniture piece is a labor-intensive project, but it perfectly transforms any item into an antique. This is perfect if you are trying to achieve a vintage or farmhouse theme.

There are several ways to go about distressing furniture, but most methods begin with sanding down the piece and painting it. After painting the furniture, you can use sandpaper on different areas of the furniture to give it an old, faded look. Some people even paint the first coat with one color, then wax the paint in certain places and apply another coat in a different color. This way, if you go back and sand the areas where the wax was, the first paint color will show through, rather than the base wood color.

Upcycling

But what about furniture pieces that are broken, unusable, or that you cannot fix with a coat of paint? One’s first instinct would be to throw it out, but there are still ways to incorporate such pieces in your room. Upcycling is the idea of taking something old or broken and repurposing it for something else. For instance, a chair may become a bookshelf, or an old set of drawers could become a foyer bench. Both upcycling and repurposing are awesome ways to give new life to old furniture that may have sentimental value to you and your family.

Breathing new life into old furniture isn’t just about saving money. It’s about creativity, making a room that is entirely your own, and even preserving elements of the past in the process. Whether you need wood stain or non-toxic* furniture paint, ECOS Paint is here to meet all your redecorating needs.

*Non-toxic - conforms to ASTM-D4236, specifically concerning oral toxicity, skin irritation and respiratory effects.

Awesome Ways To Give New Life to Old Furniture

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