The Trick to Painting Laminate Furniture

Laminate furniture can be tricky to paint due to the smooth and slick surface. Check out this tutorial for tips on how to paint laminate the easy way.

DIFFICULTY: Easy

Overview

Painting laminate furniture is not like painting wood furniture. It's incredibly slick and smooth and the paint has nothing to grip to. They're a couple different ways to do it, but for the easiest and best way to do paint laminate, read on to learn the trick!

If you've ever purchased IKEA furniture and try to paint it to only later have the paint completely peel off, I know your frustration. Painting laminate is not difficult at all, it does involve one extra step though. Here's how!

Prime laminate

The first step is the trick to painting laminate. It's not difficult, but to create a base for the main paint to stick to you'll need to prime the furniture first. The best primer to do that is Zinsser BIN Shellac-Based Primer. Although you can use this material in your sprayer, the material becomes tacky and difficult to clean so I chose to use a foam roller and tray that could be thrown away after.

Sand and dust

Once the primer is dry, lightly sand and dust the furniture. Then prep the Wagner FLEXiO 3000 Sprayer with paint.

Use liners for easy cleanup

I highly recommend using a Wagner Spray Cup Liner for even easier cleanup.

Spray furniture with paint

After your Wagner FLEXiO 3000 Sprayer is prepped, start painting the laminate furniture. I still wanted the high gloss look so I used a Gloss paint, but you can use whatever you want. Give it 2 coats and let dry.

Finally, the last step is optional based on your preference; but, you can seal the laminate with a Poly sealer. For me, how or if I seal depends on each project. Since my piece of furniture was just the sides (and not the table top) it wasn't going to get high traffic, so I skipped this step. My paint is also a high quality gloss, which can handle a lot.

Assemble pieces

After everything is dry put your piece back together, or in my case assemble it!

More info

This sponsored post was created by A Shade of Teal. To see the full tutorial and more tips/tricks for painting laminate furniture, head over to A Shade of Teal.