White furniture, it’s classic.  It’s farmhouse or modern, traditional or contemporary. But painting furniture white is tricky, until now. A few weeks ago, I reviewed a new product – Brushable White Enamel. I was so disappointed in the coverage of the white paint, I decided to go on a mission to find the quickest and easiest way to get a solid white paint coverage.  White is one of the hardest “colors” to achieve.  Between the possibility of bleed through and the nature of white paint just being hard to achieve solid all over coverage.

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So here it is – the best way (I’ve found so far) to get white furniture – without using 15 coats of paint or smelly, noxious primer. 

I filmed a full video tutorial on this process as well:

HOW TO PAINT FURNITURE WHITE

As always, I like to scuff sand the piece before painting with 220 grit sandpaper.  These end table were found on the side of the road and had lived through who knows what… So I sanded some places smooth, filled a few veneer bubbles and cleaned these with White Lightning. They were filthy, so even cleaning made a big difference. (These also were each missing a drawer, so I patched and filled a space where a drawer used to be in each one – that explains the big patch and wood filler on the front!)

Then I used a new (to me) primer called BOSS by Dixie Belle.  BOSS is a stain blocking primer perfect painting furniture white and for wood that may have the potential to bleed, or hard to cover stains or knots. BOSS comes in clear and white, and since we were going for white furniture I used white BOSS to prime these, and begin to get us to the white we desired. BOSS is water based which means you can use your good brushes without worrying about ruining them, and it doesn’t smell!!

I used two coats of BOSS – this is the surest way to prevent bleed through.  It didn’t take long to dry, and was really just like applying paint.  I used a Dixie Belle brush and it went on nice and smooth.

Remember whenever you paint the first coat of a lighter color – it looks like you ruined the piece – keep going!

Once the BOSS was dry, it was time for paint.  Dixie Belle’s whitest white is called Cotton, so I grabbed this chalk paint color and gave it one coat of the paint.  ONE COAT of white paint! It covered great! If you want to see a full tutorial on how to use Dixie Belle Chalk Paint, you can find it here. 

These tables needed distressing, they were rough to begin with, so it was a better idea to just go with the rustic look rather than try to make them look perfect.  I distressed the edges and brought a little bit of wood back to show through.  I used 120 grit sandpaper to quickly and easily distress. It wasn’t any harder to distress with the primer as the base coat.

After distressing I wanted to add a bit of shine and protection, especially to the top of these tables.  I assumed they would be used as either nightstands or end tables, so a little extra protection on a table top never hurts.  This was also a test…

I applied Dixie Belle’s Topcoat in satin finish right over the white chalk paint.  If there was going to be any kind of bleed through or color turning, it would happen now, when the water based topcoat is applied.  Nothing happened! YAY – that means BOSS really did it’s job well.  These are white farmhouse style tables with just 3 coats of paint and primer! WOO HOO!

The best way to paint furniture white? I think we found it! White furniture no longer has to be the worst to paint! Do you have a favorite white paint, I’d love to know what it is!

Stay creative!!
Jenni