My Louis XV French Provincial Chest Makeover

Gustavian antique furniture has been highly coveted ever since affluent decorating magazines such as Veranda started featuring Swedish furniture month after month as the new "luxury choice" for discerning decorators. Swedish furniture is a higher end alternative to normal white distressed furniture. Many Swedish antiques combine a twist of antique patina detail with paint hues which are layered on to give incredible depth to the appearance of the paint finish. If you have ever seen any of these pieces up close you know how absolutely exquisite they are. The most beautiful aspect to many of these genuine Swedish pieces are the exquisite layers of paint that give these painted pieces a multi-dimensional look. Many of these Swedish looks combine classic baroque and rococo designs with intricate gold details and impressive ornate furniture carvings. Many homeowners and decorators alike are turning towards the fresh look that only white can provide, but are looking for more detail than what basic white finishes typically provide. As this trend toward French and Swedish influences continues, vintage french provincial furniture has been bought up quickly at flea markets, antique stores, and through online classified listings in an effort to creating these impressive looks for less.

Designer Shannon Bowers of Dallas - Veranda Magazine

So why are so many Swedish pieces white? Well, Scandinavian countries would often be very dark and dreary in the winter months, and many homeowners responded by painting the interior wood walls and furniture in their homes with lighter paint colors in an effort to extend the available light hours of the day. They creatively painted their walls in beautiful decorative motifs and patterns much like we wallpaper our homes today.

19th Century Antique Swedish Buffet or Server By Dealer Disegno Karina Gentinetta

Continental Painted Chest A Tyner Antiques In Atlanta

Swedish Chest of Drawers, Dated 1737 Susanne Hollis

So how can you reproduce these swedish paint finishes?

Classic Swedish paint colors are always muted with aged patinas and heavy wear.

The biggest tip to recreating this look is to get the colors right. True gustavian paint colors are always muted and washed out, with beige or gray undertones. Swedish yellows are dark, never bright. Butter yellows, and cloudy blues are also classic Swedish looks. Many Swedish blues have a dark gray, white chalky or cloudy effect.

The Swedish color palette is a very basic one, consisting of green, blue, beige, brown and gray. All the colors are very muted as a result of limited paint variety. What colors can you really create with a handful of paint pigments? Artistic painters began to mix the primary colors with white or black to get variations of paint colors. Today we have several hundred paint color choices with various sheens, but many decorators turn towards the muffled hues found during the Swedish Baroque, Rococo, and Biedermeier periods because of their calming appeal and antique aesthetic.

Scandinavian Painted Furniture Step By Step WorkBook By Jocasta Innes

19th Century Swedish Mora Clock circa 1830 Jacqueline Adams Antiques

Designer Shannon Bowers of Dallas - Veranda Magazine

Finding the right paint color can go a long way in creating Swedish looks, while combining faux painting techniques such as white-washing can give furniture incredible depth in the finish.

White-washing is basically applying glaze mixed with white paint to the surface of your furniture, giving your piece a two-tone effect. White-washing can also work with oil based paint in combination with paint thinner.

For most of my pieces I prefer to work with oil paint, rather than with latex. I would highly reccomend Rust-Oleum's oil paint in satin or flat finishes.

Flat is almost impossible to find in oil, and most often comes in very limited colors. A flat finish is almost imperative in most Swedish finishes but not necessary. The best thing about Rust-Oleum's oil brand paints is that they dry overnight compared to many other oil-based brands with a drying time of 3 to 4 days. I have tried a few different brands that claim to have quick drying times, but they always fail to impress me, and they often still remain tacky a day after painting. Rust-Oleum's oil products are fantastic, but they are only available in very limited colors.

Rust-Oleum's satin oil dark taupe is one of the most frequent colors I use when I paint swedish finishes. Using a faux washing technique with soft butter yellow satin oil paint is one of the best colors to use on top of dark taupe. Additional oil colors such as the butter yellow can be purchased from specialty paint stores that tint oil paint. I use this technique on a lot of my Swedish projects.

Rust-Oleum 241238 Satin Enamels Spray, Dark Taupe, 12-Ounce

The other color which works well is Rust-Oleum's color Fossil in latex . Again using white-washing techniques, Rust-Oleum's oil flat paint tinted with an off white works extremely well in creating a washed Swedish finish.

Rust-Oleum American Accents Spray, Satin Fossil

I usually have to mix several of their oil paints to achieve custom swedish colors. Their dark olive oil paint serves as a green base for many of my colors. If you are a new painter, it is best to get your paints professionally mixed. I would suggest Sherwin Williams for oil paints, and you also can get virtually any color with Behr's Paint and Primer in one.

If you are a relatively experienced painter, you could take a few of Rust-Oleum's basic paints and mix them together. I add a bit of butter yellow oil paint (from Sherwin Williams) to Rust-Oleum's white oil flat paint to get an off white creamy white which can be used for many white washing techniques.

Here are a few of my staples:

My Paint Staples

Layering your paint finish with glaze with various lighter shades of your original tones is one way of achieving the genuine look of gustavian painted furniture. Original gustavian painted furniture was painted with paint pigments mixed with linseed oil. It would be like painting with translucent glaze as your main source of paint. I would imagine it was a rather long process painting most furniture. They often needed several coats of paint which gave their pieces the incredible translucent finishes. After 7 coats of glaze, you too will achieve the layered effect you see often in swedish furniture.

Ralph Lauren Glaze

Ralph Lauren Faux Technique Glaze

If you are working with latex paint, a glaze can go a long way toward adding depth to your furniture.

If you are working with oil, translucent finishes can be achieved by simply working with paint thinner and stippling it on to your furniture just like you would with glaze.

The biggest tip I can pass on to anyone who is faux painting a dresser that needs several coats of paint for a faux finish is to apply only 1 or 2 coats (at the most) to the inside of the drawers. If you end up having 5 coats of paint, your drawers will not open and close. Use finishing wax on the inside of your drawers to make them move with ease after painting them. For years I put up with drawers that were sticky after painting, until someone suggested that wax makes all the difference.

My French Provincial Louis Dresser Makeover

My French Provincial Dresser Makeover......

Many french provincial reproduction furniture pieces have such durable finishes that they are almost impossible to chip, which is an excellent quality to have. If you are looking for a french dresser, and you want to make it over using a swedish finish, I would highly suggest working with a dresser that has just a wood finish and no paint.

Typical white french provincial furniture pieces are often found with rock hard enamel paint. The challenge with these white finishes is they are especially hard to strip.

Many vintage manufactures have taken the enamel finish and combined them with chemicals such as melamine paint and baked them in large ovens, which gave them rock hard solid paint finishes. Stripping these finishes is next to impossible.

Classic Swedish furniture finishes contain two major elements.

1. Layers of paint colors

2. Natural distressing that has occured over time, showing the natural wood

So what do you do if your original paint is white?

The dresser I painted was solid wood, but also had an original white finish, so I had to duplicate the look of wood with a coat of orange paint, so that when I distressed the furniture, it would give the appearance of some depth to the paint finish.

The next layer is an off white beige color, which I was able then to distress showing the orange.

After the distressing, I used a white oil paint diluted with thinner and dabbled it onto the dresser giving it a little bit of a textured look. Additional white washes were applied to give it an overall white effect.