White Washing Tutorial | Furniture Painting

White-washing is a great way to brighten up any piece without losing the beautiful grainy look of the wood.

In this tutorial we'll show you how to create a white washed look on your piece. If you'd rather watch a video, we also have a video tutorial available towards the bottom of the page!

All Country Chic Paint products used in this tutorial are available at www.countrychicpaint.com.

Step 1: Prepare Your Surface

If you're working with a raw wood surface, start by using a metal brush to open the pores of the wood.

This technique works best on raw wood that doesn’t have a finish on it. But, if you have a nice piece of oak furniture with a clear finish, that you want to white-wash. we recommend a good sanding with medium grit sandpaper to rough it up and open up the pores of the wood, so that it can soak up the paint better.

Step 2: Apply Simplicity

You can apply the paint at full strength, or you can thin it with water (up to about 1 part of water to 2 parts of paint). Make sure to go in the same direction as the wood grain.

You don’t have to get perfect coverage, just get it on about 75% of your surface. With white washing, you want give the wood a light wash, without getting full opaque coverage, because you want the wood grain to show through.

Step 3: Remove Excess Paint

Immediately after applying Simplicity, you’ll take a damp cloth and wipe away as much paint as you want to create the look you’re after.

Step 4: Build Up in Layers

If you realize you’ve taken off too much of the Simplicity, you’ll simply go over it again with another coat of paint and wipe it off again. You can build up your coverage in layers.

That's all there is to it. Pretty simple isn't it?

There is no reason you can only use Simplicity as a wash, so experiment with other paint colors as well!