Thursday, March 6, 2014

White Washing A Grey Dresser

White washing is a great technique to make your paint come to life and it is much easier than it looks.   I wish I was better at those darn "before" pictures.  I remembered the before picture after I painted my dresser.
This dresser started out with a mustard color from the 50's.  I wanted a French linen.  Love the color, but I wanted the grey to really "pop" so I decided to put a white wash on this. Once you have painted a piece and it has dried, white washing is super easy.

Take a damp cloth, dip it in the color that you want to use as a wash and drag it across your dried paint. I like to start with a drawer, in case I don't like the effect of the wash on the paint.  I used Old White on this piece.  It's more white than it looks in this photo, but it's not a pure white.
The great thing about white washing with a wet rag, is that you can wipe more on or off depending on your preference. You control how much stays or goes.
If you don't wipe in a straight line, your white wash will curve like mine did above.  But that is easy to fix with a few more wipes on and off.

White washing allows you to lighten your paint as much as you want.  I could have continued once this dried with another coat - which would have looked super cool, but I wanted the grey to stand out.

This dresser is an oldie.....but a goodie.  Much better than the original mustard color she started out with.  I'm sure you have an old dresser you can try this with.  Go ahead.  Have fun with it!

Happy Thursday.

Paula

Linking with:

Petite Michelle Louise


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