Painting your home has an instantly transformative effect.
Whether you’re only brave enough to do a section or you’re planning a total room makeover, adding a lick of paint to your walls can bring your space to life and make it a warmer and more welcoming space.
Painting furniture can also bring a piece back from the brink, giving it a whole new lease of life. Whether you’re bored of bedside cabinets, tired of sitting at a tatty dining table or about to bin your dining chairs, the simple upcycle of paint can make you appreciate them in a whole new light.
It’s not as simple as loading up a brush and slapping the paint on. Different textures require slightly different paint, not just from an aesthetic perspective, but to make them longer wearing and able to stand up against years of use. If you’re planning on painting wood, be it furniture or room trims like skirting boards and doorways, there’s a little prep involved first.
How to prep wood for paint
- Protect your home from unintended splashes by covering everything with a dust sheet carefully before you begin.
- Before you go anywhere near your tin of paint, first clean the surface thoroughly with soap and warm water. Painted surfaces should be gently sanded with sandpaper or a small electric sander to allow the paint to 'stick' better. Don’t skip eye and face masks to protect yourself from flying particles.
- Mend chips and cracks with filler, or leave them to retain your furniture’s character.
- Laminated furniture may require a priming coat first but brands like Frenchic offer two-in-one paint and primers to cut down the process. Check the tin before you get started.
- Are you hoping to create a pattern? While using masking tape tends to make paint bleed, a roll of decorator’s tape will give your edges a sharp finish.
- Buy the right brushes, and your decision will repay you for the time and effort saved. Rollers are handy for distributing an even layer of colour quickly. Just like doing your nails, apply paint in thin layers. They’ll dry quicker and result in an even finish.
A word on outdoor wood
There are also paints for exterior wood that are designed to withstand (almost) anything the infamous British weather can throw at it. If you’re planning a paint project to spruce up your decking, shed, fences, or anything else that lives outside, a specialist paint is your best bet. We’ve included some of those below too.
Feeling inspired? You’ll have to pick your paint first. We’re here to help with a list of the best paint made for wood.
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COAT Festival Eve
Offering a selection of interior emulsion paints, the eggshell finish is perfect for highlighting wood and metal surfaces. All colours in the collection are durable and hard-wearing making them one to reach for in high-traffic areas like the hallway.
Festival Eve is an elegant dusky rose shade that will highlight details like wooden stair bannisters, cupboard doors and wooden panels beautifully. Available in 1L and 2.5L cans.
Buy now £34.00, COAT
Little Greene Paints Mister David
A sunshine yellow won't fail to cheer up woodwork, be it your front door or the garden fence. Made for exterior wood, this bold hue is highly pigmented with virtually zero VOCs and gives a professional-looking finish. It's available in a swathe of finishes for different surfaces so you can do your interior walls in the same shade too. Prepare for a serious dopamine injection.
Buy now £43.50, Little Greene Paints
Dulux Quick Dry Gloss Paint - Mineral Mist - 750ml
Bring woodwork to life with Dulux’s sky-blue water-based paint, named Mineral Mist. The soothing shade is just one of many in this collection, offering a high-sheen finish after a six-hour drying time. The low-odour formula can be used on door frames, skirting boards and even radiators that need livening up. It comes in a range of colours and finishes including Satinwood and Eggshell, in addition to Gloss.
Want pure brilliant white? Find it here (£16.99).
Buy now £15.21, Amazon
Rust-Oleum Furniture Spray Paint - Bramwell - 400ml
While painting with a brush or roller gives you ultimate control, if you’re planning on covering a large area or want a speckled effect, a can of spray paint could be the better option. Rust-Oleum offers paint ready for your project’s transformation in a variety of colours, including Bramwell, a warm moss green. It can be sprayed directly onto cleaned surfaces without the need for a primer coat first, and additional coats will increase its opacity.
Buy now £13.00, Homebase
Lick Red HTK 57 Matt 2.5L
Lick has teamed up with Heinz to create 570 limited-edition tins of energising red paint. A fun choice to cover the whole kitchen, highlight trims or simply create an accent feature, this emulsion can paint all sorts of surfaces, from metal radiators and woodwork to plastered walls and ceilings.
Buy now £45.00, Lick
Vintro Paint Satin Furniture Paint - Light Stone
Fans of soothing, calming tones can make use of Vintro Paint’s Pebble shade, a warm cream that can be used to stain everything from walls to woodwork and of course, furniture. In fact, the water-based solution is safe enough to use on children’s toys and furniture, useful if you want to give their Little Tykes pedal car a showroom-worthy makeover. Once tried, it’s easy to keep your upcycled project in good nick as it’s washable, making cleaning a breeze too.
Buy now £29.99, Amazon
Lick Green 18 Eggshell
As well as bringing your walls to life, you can give last-chance furniture and homewares a new life with Lick paint, as long as it's wood. Simply apply a thin coat of paint and let dry before sanding off bumpy sections in preparation for a second coat.
Lick’s paints only come in 2.5L tins, so it’s a good purchase if you’re planning to refresh large pieces or want to paint sections of your home in the same colour.
Buy now £45.00, Lick
Frenchic Mother Duck Original Artisan
Frenchic’s Instagram account is rammed with inspirational ideas and blink-twice transformations to get you started. Made for rookies and a dream for pros, the Original Artisan Range is self-priming, skipping a lengthy extra step if you’re planning to paint over dark furniture.
The Lazy Range is even better: self-priming and self-levelling so you’ll barely see brush marks on surfaces if you’re a bit heavy-handed.
Both ranges are safe to use on children’s toys but the Lazy is water resistant too, which makes it a fabulous choice for furniture you’ll put in the kitchen, laundry room and bathroom.
Meanwhile, the Chalk Wall Paint range is for more than just walls. It’s easy to use on surfaces like woodwork, ceramic wall tiles and wood or concrete floors too - talk about range.
Add figures to your original purchase by painting with Mother Duck Original Artisan, an elegant pale blue that comes in 750ml (£18.95) and 250ml (£9.99) sizes.
Buy now £20.95, Frenchic
Dunelm x Natural History Museum Kingfisher Teal Matt Emulsion Paint
Where to use: wainscotting, panelling and accent walls
In a bold hue that maximalists will love, this emulsion paint is part of the Wetlabs collab between homewares brand Dunelm and London's prestigious Natural History Museum. Inspired by the feathers of a Kingfisher, the statement teal can be used across surfaces to give a uniform appearance: think walls, woodwork, radiators and primed metal surfaces.
Buy now £28.00, Dunelm
Valspar Premium Wood & Metal Interior Gloss Basecoat, Base C, 2.5L Emerald Temple
Itching to try something other than white or magnolia? Valspar has a huge range of water-based interior paint to colour your home happy. If you want to feel like you’re living in a jewellery box (and really, who doesn’t?), this forest green paint should do nicely.
It will cover both wood and metal (which means you can paint your radiators with it too) and once dry, offers remarkable scrubbability, scuff and stain resistance. Make sure you remove all old paint with sandpaper before you start to get a smooth, even finish.
Buy now £42.00, B&Q
