You can give new life to outdated furniture with fun painting techniques.
Update or repurpose old or unsightly pieces of furniture and give them new life with fun, funky paint jobs that turn them from drab, dark pieces into bright pieces that burst with color. With a few basic painting supplies and your own creativity, you can transform your own old pieces of furniture or inexpensive flea market finds into one-of-a-kind masterpieces that will brighten up any room.
Stripes
Big, wide stripes in a variety of colors add a fun, whimsical look to your furniture and can be painted horizontally, vertically or both. Section off stripes with a level and tape to make perfectly even stripes, or draw them freehand with a pencil before you paint for more of a folk-art look. Make stripes in a variety of sizes and colors for a preppier look. No matter how you choose to make your stripes, the pop of color and contrast they provide will instantly brighten up any space in which your newly striped piece of furniture is placed.
Dots
Dots are fun, and whether big or small, these spots of color can be supremely organized or a confettilike conglomeration of sizes, colors and slightly imperfect circles. If perfect circles are your goal, make or buy circle templates of cardboard or thin plastic; alternatively, you can trace the outlines of different-sized saucers, cups and plates on your furniture with a pencil and paint them in. You can also paint your circles in more of a freehand fashion, which gives your furniture a handcrafted, whimsical look. On furniture with drawers, circles can be continued across drawer lines so they're bisected when the drawers are open.
Freehand
Draw your own shapes and designs, such as flowers, faces, names, quotations, scenes and even murals, to create a memorable, one-of-a-kind piece. This often works best by first sketching out your design with pencil after you've primed your piece of furniture, although different people have different techniques, and some like to start painting without any kind of sketching beforehand.
Mixed Patterns
Mixing stripes, dots and florals creates a fun, unexpected and incredibly whimsical look that's used often for furniture with drawers. Each drawer is painted with a different technique: one drawer will have stripes, another dots and another florals. Each is painted in a bright, vivid fashion, and the rest of the dresser is painted in yet another technique or bright color to highlight and set off the drawers.
