The shabby chic look is possibly one of the most popular trends. Mixing antique furniture with pastel colours, people are collecting beautiful vintage or retro objects and creating fabulous paint effects to create this look in their home. What’s more its easy and inexpensive to achieve.
If you’ve found a piece of furniture you want to shabby chic. Here’s how.
Before you get started make sure your item of furniture is smooth and free from any dust. You may need to remove any wood finish with sandpaper or a wire wool pad depending on the paint you are using. If using a product like the Rust-Oleum Chalky Finish Furniture Paint this isn’t necessary as the paint can be applied directly onto most surfaces without the need to prime, sand or prepare it.
Most shabby chic colours tend to be creamy whites, grey-whites, green whites and pale blue and greens, however there are no rules. You could always experiement with different colours. Perhaps try two contrasting colours or something more subtle using toning colours for a softer look.
For a smooth and solid finish apply 2 or 3 coats of your paint. If you are looking to sand back the wood giving a distressed look then you may need less. Depending on your chosen paint, you will normally need to leave about 4 hours between each coat to ensure it is fully dry.
Another option is to select two colours, one for the bottom coat and one for a top coat. This works well to create your shabby chic look as when you sand down areas of the top coat you reveal the underlying shade.
Once dry, take a piece of sandpaper and rub gently in selected areas to create your look. Its best to start with the corners and edges of your furniture and work from there. When creating a natural distressed look the trick is to be careful not to be too heavy handed. Its better to stand back and keep check on how its progressing that to do too much at once.
When you have finished creating your look, its time to protect that paint with a type of finishing wax. Work the wax into the wood with a cloth and leave to dry for about 10 minutes. Once dry, rub over with a dry cloth to remove any excess wax.
For some further tips view the How-to use Rust-Oleum Chalky Finish Furniture Paint video below:
