How to Distress Furniture: A Comprehensive Step-by-Step Guide
Knowing how to distress furniture comes in handy when you want to blend new or handmade furnishings with vintage or antique furnishings. Specific DIY distressing techniques offer nearly unlimited options for sprucing up old pieces, customizing garage-sale or estate-sale finds, and upcycling thrift-store or free-on-the-curb furniture. If you want to add a timeless air to your belongings, this guide helps you achieve the makeover results you want by defining different distressing styles and providing step-by-step guidance on how to distress furniture.
Defining Distressed Furniture
Distressed furniture refers to pieces that have been deliberately weathered or damaged to give them an older appearance. Many methods exist for adding the look of wear and tear, with some requiring sandpaper, paint strippers and various distressing mediums. Finished pieces typically exude vintage flair in cottage or shabby-chic rooms or bring rustic beauty to farmhouse or country-style spaces. Additionally, distressed furniture techniques imbue furnishings with a one-of-a-kind style, helping you personalize your home decor. While wood proves especially well-suited to distressing techniques, other materials also handle it well, including:
- Concrete
- Glass
- Metal
- Stone
- Plaster
- Plastic
Styles Well-Suited to Distressing
Many styles of furniture take well to distressing techniques, making them a flexible way to enhance furnishings. Simple weathered-wood frames offer a beautiful way to accent old-fashioned photographs, while primitive buffets and sideboards fit seamlessly with lodge-style home decor. Adding signs of wear to newly built mid-century modern tables helps them pair perfectly with the real deal, and imbuing antique bedroom suites with a patina helps them mesh well with treasured family heirlooms. Distressed furniture runs the gamut from farmhouse and country to rustic and nautical, providing nearly limitless options for customizing your living space.
Decorating with Distressed Furniture
Decorating with distressed furnishings can be as elaborate as entire rooms filled with themed furniture or as simple as adding an accent piece to contemporary home decor. For example, farmhouse kitchens benefit from wire-brushed bakers racks and whitewashed or pickled cabinets, while sitting rooms may only require a crackle-finished urn to complete a classic look. Whether you want to make over your whole home or just bring a touch of hominess to certain spaces, learning how to distress furniture and furnishings adds a useful skill to your home decor tool belt.
Step-by-Step Guide to Distressing Furniture
The steps you use when learning how to distress furniture are fairly simple and straightforward. Typically, this DIY project begins like any other with preparing your space and cleaning your piece, but the actual distressing techniques vary, with different methods creating either a charming rustic or antique look depending on how you want your final result to turn out. This furniture distressing tutorial walks you through many common techniques so you can decide what’s best for your DIY project.
1.) Preparing Your Work Area
Before you start your DIY distressed furniture project, you need to prepare your work area. First, tape off any portion of the piece of furniture you’re distressing with masking or painter’s tape, then lay down a tarp or drop cloth to protect your flooring. This prep work also includes removing hardware before you begin. Lightly sand all surfaces to help paint stick and improve adhesion before distressing.
2.) Cleaning and Sanding the Surface
Once you’ve prepared your space, it’s time to clean the wall, object or piece of furniture you wish to distress. An easy way to remove all the dirt and grime, especially from actual old pieces, is to use Emerge™ Cleaner & Degreaser. When you’ve wiped the surface down completely, fill any holes and sand down any rough spots that don’t work with your distressing aesthetic; dry sanding is the usual prep, while wet distressing is another option, and 80-grit sandpaper works well to get down to bare wood or for light distressing so paint will stick. Then remove any sanding dust with a damp cloth before moving on to paint. If you spot any metal stains and want to remove them, consider using Oxalic Wood Bleach by RMP Finishes before you move on to the furniture painting step.
3.) Distressing Wood Furniture Via Damage
While many furniture distressing techniques are designed for use after painting, most makeovers require damaging the surface before you paint. You can start by using imperfect wood for DIY projects that’s already distressed to a degree, or you can choose woods that mar easily and damage them yourself. Soft woods in particular take well to wire brushing, and you can do this by attaching a wire brush to an electric drill and using it to create deeper grooves in the surface to mimic the look of weathered barn wood. The most convincing results usually show up most in high-touch areas. Other techniques include beating the wood with a chain to leave subtle indentations or hitting it with a rag filled with sharp nails to add small yet deep divots. When you get the results you require, move on to the painting phase, focusing the distressing on edges and corners rather than broad, flat areas, so the piece has real-life, natural wear.
4.) Painting Your Piece
Before painting the furniture piece you want to distress with Real Milk Paint®, consider the results you want. Choosing a base coat and a contrasting top color helps the distressed finish show more clearly. For instance, if you want a layered paint effect, you may want to mix both hues together, adding our Anti-Foaming Agent to the first batch you use while letting the other color settle naturally. Our Real Milk Paint® powder mixes at a 1:1 ratio with water, so you can quickly mix up as little or as much as you need. If you want to use it on patio furniture or landscaping elements, our Outdoor Additive gives it extra resistance to mildew and bleed-through from wood knots.
Once you’ve mixed up the formulation to the consistency you require, you’re ready to paint. To get a smooth surface without brush marks, use a foam roller; for a traditionally painted look, use standard paintbrushes. Real Milk Paint® dries quickly, so you don’t have to wait long after painting the first coat before applying the second. If you’re using layers, hold off on that second coat until you’ve distressed the area to your satisfaction, since the base coat is the color meant to show through, and a darker color on top can add more contrast.
Techniques for Achieving a Distressed Look
There are myriad ways for DIYers to achieve distressed-furniture effects, depending on the results you want. It helps to consider the entire piece before deciding which distressing techniques to use and gather the supplies you require before you begin.
Dry Brushing
The dry brushing technique is one of the easiest ways to distress wood furniture, and it only takes a little bit of paint on a paintbrush or dry brush to create an aged look. All you need for this method is the paint color you want to use and some paper towels. To begin, apply a normal coat of paint to your chosen surface, then lightly go over it with the dry paintbrush. When your paintbrush gets too wet, use paper towels to wipe off excess paint and continue dry-brushing your project piece. The final results should have a lightly weathered look well-suited to rustic home decor.
Wet Paper
Wet-paper furniture distressing techniques are simple to achieve at virtually any skill level. Wet distressing can also be done by wiping back paint with a damp paper towel or lint-free cloth. To achieve a wet-distress visual effect, tear a piece of paper into large and small pieces, wet the paper thoroughly, then place the wet pieces around the surface you’re distressing. Paint over them as usual, then pull the paper up while the paint is still wet or wait for it to dry, depending on your preference. If you want to add more distressing, repeat the resist process until you get the look you want.
Candle Techniques
Candle techniques work well for layered color effects because the candle wax method keeps paint from sticking in selected spots. Some DIYers use Vaseline or even spray paint for a similar resist effect. After painting, rub a nontinted wax candle firmly over the surface at random intervals, then paint over it with the color you wish to layer. When the surface dries completely, rub it hard with a dry cloth, and the paint should lift in the spaces you rubbed the candle. If you like, you can repeat this process as many times as needed until you achieve the exact distressed look you desire.
Distressing Mediums
Distressing mediums take some of the guesswork out of distressing furniture as they’re designed to achieve specific effects. These mediums include a range of products that work beautifully with acrylic, milk and chalk paints, including furniture wax and creams by RMP Finishes. Stain can also be layered or wiped back with a lint-free cloth if you apply too much stain and want a more natural look. To use these burnishing products, rub them into already-painted surfaces with a soft rag, then wipe them away to get an aged patina. Natural Crackle Paint Finish adds an antique cracked effect to surfaces, and you can use it sparingly or all over, depending on the look you require.
Sealing the Surface
After you’ve completed the hard work on your distressed furniture project, you’re ready to preserve it. You can seal distressed surfaces in multiple ways, but the easiest is to use wax or oils. Furniture Wax in Clear provides an easy-to-apply satin finish to the painted surface. Wood Wax by RMP Finishes makes a nice choice for items that may come into contact with food, and it wipes on and off with ease for fuss-free application. For a more protective finish in your choice of dead flat, gloss and matte sheens, consider Finishing Creams that work beautifully on surfaces covered with Real Milk Paint®.
While distressing furniture may seem daunting for newbie DIYers, simple techniques and high-quality products from RMP Finishes can shorten your learning curve. Multiple options that suit a range of decorative styles ensure you find the perfect way to complete the look of your latest project.
