Layered paint is so beautiful and it gives you an opportunity to add colors to your furniture and accessories that you normally might not have tried. Using contrasting or bright colors for your base layers can add excitement to an otherwise boring paint finish.

Layers of paint are a fast and easy way to get a distressed vintage type look on your furniture and home accessories. Here are a few tricks that can help you get the distressed look your want.

How Do You Paint Furniture In Layers?

First start by deciding on your colors and what order you want them to appear.

Now you can go ahead and paint your first color and allow to dry completely.

Paint Your Second Coat

Once the piece was completely painted with the 2nd color, allow to dry overnight.

Types of Distressing

Wax Distressing for the Deepest Distress

Using candle wax to coat the edges works to distress any type of paint including spray paint.

Go ahead and wax in places that you would normally see wear like the handles and edges.

Now you can paint the second color. The wax will resist the paint, giving you a chipped paint look. Now you can allow to completely dry. Once dry, you can begin chipping away the second coat, this can go down through the first base paint.

Crackling Your Paint 

We'll create a crackle finish that's a more natural crackle that comes in from the sides, but doesn’t go across the whole project. To do this you need a highly specialized craft tool . . . Elmers School Glue.

All you need to do is brush it on in an uneven way. I used the phrase intentionally random. You want the glue to be thicker in some areas and thinner in others. Where the glue is thick the cracks will be wider and where it’s thinner the cracks will be thinner.

Let the glue partially dry. You want it to still be tacky. Then brush on your next color of paint. I decided on a turquoise blue because it falls the same distance from the red as it does from the yellow on the contrast scale, so they should work well together. Cracks will begin to form as the top layer of paint dries.

Distressing with Sandpaper

If you use a light touch when sanding you can feather the edges of chips and take the paint back layer by layer. You can go all the way down to the wood if you want but do so slowly and intentionally.

If it’s done right it can be a natural looking way to distress paint.

Water Distressing for Chalk Paint

All of the distressing techniques above can be used on any kind of paint including latex, spray paint and chalk paint.

Water distressing can only be done with chalk and acrylic paints. I believe this to be true because both paints are matte.

Water distressing is similar to sanding where you can rub away layers of chalk paint but instead of the scratch “sanded” look you get a rubbed finish that looks like paint that’s been worn away after years of being handled. To water distress all you need is a piece of cloth and some water. You don’t want the cloth to be soaked just a little damp and then wipe away the layers of paint.

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Tags: FRENCH COUNTRY COTTAGE, Paint, Brush

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