Question – What Paint Colors Work With French Provincial Furniture ?

 

 

 

Question : Was wondering what are popular colors now in style, about to paint a French Provincial chest of drawers and nightstand? Was thinking turquoise but didn’t know if that color was still in? Your opinions appreciated

Becky – There’s so much regional variation in what’s popular, but if I was going to do a turquoise, I would lean more toward a muted teal, sort of along the lines of Benjamin Moore’s color of the year- Aegean Teal. Country Chic has a color I want to try- Jitterbug, which is a sophisticated muted teal. Colors like Fusion’s French Eggshell sell really well for me on french provincial furniture.

Owen – The clue is in the word, French!

Becky – I see French Provincial painted in all sorts of colors successfully, but I think that French Eggshell is a such a subtle and versatile color that it sells well on lots of styles.

Pam – Depends on the style but people seem to like stripes no matter what the color is. Pantones 2021 colors are a deeper yellow (mustard) and medium gray.

Rachel – I’ve been doing this for 10 years. I paint how I feel, I use color! I don’t follow trends.

Isabel – Navy is very big now

Krystal – I hear baby blue’s. I think it’s going to be different every where. Some people are still stuck on Farmhouse style too and last year was Bohemian from articles I read

Jessica – Sold fast Can’t go wrong with White

Monica – White is definitely the quickest seller for me. But French Blue and Gray are tied for second.

Stacey – A mineral blue many shades are now great

Lisa – If you want to sell it quickly -White. I know it’s dull but it always sells.

Lana – I think Navy, Black and white

Paula – Turquoise is over here

Lisa – I’m doing lots of dark blues, white and black

Cheryl – It depends where you live. Unfortunately, where I am it’s basically grey, white, black. Every once in a while we do different colors and wait for the right person to come along.

Marcie – I’ve tried doing colors but they take me a long time to sell. Things I paint white sell right after posting them.

Amy – Lavender, teal, light blue or gray

Alexis – I will be honest, not an “in” color anymore, peaked about 5 years ago. But if you like it and it goes with your decor, who cares? And that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t sell. Other “jewel” tones are popular right now like green and blue (dark).

Aged Silver Patina Painted Vintage Bassett French Provincial Dresser

Featured from Craigslist – NY Craigslist

You are viewing a stunning mid century French provincial chest of drawers, manufactured in the 1950’s to 1960’s by Bassett Furniture. The piece was in excellent condition prior to being refurbished. It was completely stripped (not just sanded) of its “Golden Bisque” paint, and given a makeover in a beautiful aged metallic silver patina with a satin clear coat. The 4 large drawers were embellished with a dimensional stencil design. All 6 drawers have also been painted on the inside and lined in an exquisite black and reflective metallic silver fabric lining. Hardware was refinished in a gloss black.

The furniture is made of solid wood, with no particle board or plastic pieces. The original Bassett brass seal is in the top left drawer, which was their guarantee of quality back in the day. And it truly is a quality piece of furniture that was made to last for generations. It is made of choice pieces of solid wood with quality dove tail constructed drawers and strong, solid hardware. They don’t make furniture like this anymore.

 

How To Update Vintage French Provincial Furniture

French Provincial Furniture From Stiltskin Studios Esty

A Beautiful Light Pink French Provincial Furniture From Stiltskin Studios Esty

Vintage French furniture can be a terrific opportunity to getting the upscale French looks for less.  Vintage furniture can be found in most American and Canadian cities and for the most part they are affordable.  Many of these vintage sets can be transformed with paint, or even stripped of it’s varnish and re-stained a different color.   Vintage French furniture allows you the opportunity to experiment with finishes, textures, colors and distressing techniques, when the prices are reasonable.  There are so many possibilities with vintage French Provincial furniture.

Before you consider colors, decide whether your interior scheme is country style, or formal and elegant.  There are a number of ways to give these pieces a facelift, but truly most French styles fall into these two categories.

Ebay

1.  French City Styles

French furniture can have a polished look, as well as a country look.  Depending on the paint color choice, and the style of furniture, it can be painted to have a more sophisticated look, or looks that resemble furniture belonging to country homes.

My other site- French Style Authority features many of the upscale French looks that you might see in formal French interiors.  Some examples of the formal French looks, include extravagant marquetry chests, gilt wood chests and wall clocks, and upholstered furniture with rich silk fabrics.

How To Pull Off This Look…..

-Consider painting your furniture gray and white wash the frame with a creamy white.  Upholster your pieces with rich pastel upholstery in raw silk, or velvet.  Raw silk has some of the most saturated color choices around, and will surely give your pieces a high end look.  Satin is another choice to get that rich Marie Antoinette look for your home.  You can also shop for fabric online to help you reupholster your furniture yourself. Check out your favorite fabric shops online and get the materials shipped right to your home. You can either reupholster it yourself or hire a company to do it for you.

-Go for the more saturated colors.  This photo shows an exceptional emerald green and gilt wood combination.  Have custom marble or stone fit for your dresser, or buffet tops.  See this post “Decorating With Pastels” for more inspiration.  To make your dresser look richer, gold leaf the hardware, and add more hardware to the chest, such as furniture mounts and keyholes.

-While I can hardly compare this 75 thousand dollar vitrine to a 300 dollar French chest, you can certainly borrow some ideas for your own furniture.  Instead of painting your furniture, why not stain it?  Simply remove the finish with a heat gun, or paint stripper.  Consider faux finishing the raw furniture with lines that look like the expensive veneer woods.  (This would only work on the solid wood pieces) All that is needed is polystain, and a couple thin brushes.  Improve the look of your furniture by adding custom ormolu to the drawers, feet, and hammer on matching keyholes to a dresser or chest.  Gold leaf the hardware to create the look of a matching set.

– Color really makes a huge difference on these pieces.  Paint companies such as Annie Sloan, Darryl Carter For Benjamin Moore, and The Williamsburg Color Collection By Benjamin Moore are specially designed after the historical colors.  Having the just right color can make a tremendous difference in the overall appearance.

-9 Ways To Transform Vintage Furniture- Painted Furniture Online
-The Interior French Furniture Of Versailles- The French Style Authority
-The Best Ways To Get The French Look For Less-The French Style Authority
-Marie Antoinette Behind the Scences For Vogue Magazine- The French Style Authority
-French Furniture Restoration ~Gold Leafing Tips- The French Style Authority

-Absolutely Breathtaking French Painted Furniture- The French Style Authority

2.  French Country Styles

The country styles can have bold color as well, although you will find the finish and colors to be different.  Consider the color palette of the French countryside such as the purples, green and blues found in Frederic Mechiehe’s Provence Home In Hyeres, and yellows, seen in Tremolet’s Chateau d’Ailly in Normandy.

In this post, “5 Paint Color Choices For Provincial Furniture” I show a number of country colors that would work perfectly on painted chairs, desks, armoires, beds and chests.  Consider skipping the bright gold hardware for rusty pieces, or iron looking hardware.

– Don’t just paint your pieces one solid color and add hardware, and call it a day….  be sure to really highlight the curves and carvings.  This yellow armoire wouldn’t look the same without having the carved areas highlighted in white

W Magazine French Chair - ROCHE BOBOIS chair, from $4,174, roche-bobois.com
Gift Guide Garden Party- W Magazine
ROCHE BOBOIS chair, from $4,174, roche-bobois.com.

 Scalamandre- China Rose on pair of Begere Chairs

Scalamandre- China Rose on pair of Begere Chairs- Furbish Studio

Marie Antoinette Seen on Business Insider
 
Bright red, and pastel colors seen on Marie Antoinette Seen on www.businessinsider.com
Drexel Touraine French Provincial Dresser
Drexel Touraine French Provincial Dresser- axsoris.com

When To Prime Furniture, When To Sand: My Restoration Learning Lessons

Lacquered French Desk From Ralph Lauren

Priming and Distressing Mistakes are the number one thing I see most people mess up when they paint french provincial furniture.  (I have made my share of mistakes in the past, and eventually came to learn the tricks of the trade. Mine was by trial and error, perhaps you can learn from my painting mistakes.) Black has become tremendously popular because it simply looks fantastic as the years go by.  You can never go wrong with classic colors such as cream, black and gray.  Here are a couple tips to keep in mind when painting black furniture. 

DO NOT use white primer under black paint.  I see this mistake A LOT.

Do not use white primer under red paint, or any other darker paint color used as a top coat.

White primer is certainly fine under lighter colors such as yellow or cream, and lighter blues, but not under dark paint colors.

When you see this happen, or you did it yourself, you either faced two situations……….

1.  You only had a choice of only primers from your local hardware store.  There are really two primers on the market.  White, and tinted white, which is really Gray.

Painting walls and painting furniture require two totally different approaches.

For walls, it is recommended that you prime, especially if you have shiny walls, or oil walls, as latex paint will not stick to the finish.

 

Do You See The White From Distressing?

When I first started painting I loved black.  My phases went from loving mahogany to black, and now to gray, and I have painted everything in between.  Furniture doesn’t necessary need a primer if you are willing to work hard sanding the piece of furniture before you decide to paint.

In some ways, this is better than adding a primer, especially when you are adding color, because it gives you room to distress the piece of furniture, which gives a piece of furniture more depth to show through.

2.  When you see dressers which are darker in color, or black with white showing through, it might because the dresser was white to begin with.  Perhaps the dresser was a vintage dresser with the typical white and gold finish.  Henry Link Furniture, Thomasville, and Dixie especially have heavy white paint which is often oven baked on.  Striping this paint off is especially hard, so many people just opt to paint over it.  They then go to distress it, and the sand down to the original white finish.

There are two ways around this…… 

Mayfair Table By Ralph Lauren

1.  Simply Don’t distress your furniture if you have the original white manufacture paint under the top coat.  Consider going for a high gloss Regency look, which often doesn’t feature distressing, but looks like glass.  This can look especially nice on serpentine french provincial dressers.

2.  Start off with a base coat.   With black top coats, red works well as a bottom color.  You see many oriental chests that feature black chests which are distressed showing a red base color.

I tend to work with oils, and prefer my base coats to be in oil as it sticks better.  I also prefer my base coats to be as flat as possible, but finding oil paint in flat is next to impossible.  If you end up getting an oil paint in a satin, after it dries, you can simply just sand it.  Be sure it is dry.  I have tried out many oil brands, and they are all different.  One brand, I waited almost a week for it to dry which is just ridiculous.  Granted, it was during the rainy season.  Sanding down your first coat of oil paint in a satin finish just requires a fine piece of sandpaper.  Be sure to work with oil afterwards, because most paint simply will not adhere to satin oil paint.  Everything naturally adheres to flat paint, so I tend to use flat oil paint in my priming coat.

When you go to distress your furniture, be careful to distress your furniture with care, because you only want to sand down to the red coat, not the white coat.

Popular Primers On The Market:

 

Excellent WALL Primer

Behr came out with a Paint and Primer mixed together.  My mom just finished painting her home, which they hadn’t done for several years and she was SOOOOOOO excited about the new color, but much of her excitement was that the paint didn’t smell.  She phoned me up one night and was so excited over the color,…..”OH You have to try out a company called Behr…. not Bear, but spelled Behr,….. they have a primer mixed in with the paint”  She didn’t know that I have been painting with this paint for some time.  Perhaps she remembered using paint with terrible fumes.  May be I have been painting so long that I don’t notice it, but she said she painted her bedroom that night, and was able to sleep in it just a few hours later.  She was so happy with this brand.  It is really great.  I remember the first time I tried the new paint and primer, I used a dark navy and it covered the wall very very well.  I was just as happy as her.  SO, if you want to use brighter colors, or even black, use the paint and primer, but just sand down your furniture first.  For hard baked melamine finishes typically seen on vintage french provincial, use a light brown oil paint in flat, so when you distress your furniture, it is a base color that looks much like wood.

WALL Primer

For the longest time, my favorite primer was Gripper as it is a fantastic primer, but I no longer use it on my furniture, but it is really good on the walls.  I first used it to seal a floor that was being painted white in an apartment building. It held up on apartment floors that dozens of people would walk on daily.

Kilz is another very popular primer.  Many people think it is one of the best primers out on the market. If you do use this brand, consider the spray paint primer…..Kilz Original Primer Spray Paint. The oil primer is especially thick and very hard to manipulateso I wouldn’t recommend it.  I have not tried their water-based version, so please don’t discount this brand all together.

I didn’t fully appreciate a great primer until I stumbled upon a fabulous primer that I cannot live without. Today I use it for all my painted furniture, and it has rejuvenated my passion for painting. Every primer is a bit different, and I am so thankful to have come across it.  My biggest secret is Cover Stain which can be found at most Hardware stores.  You also can order it through Amazon.  It is called Cover Stain By Zinsser and I use the oil paint that is tint-table. When ever I use this paint, I get it tinted the color I am wanting.  It only works with relatively light colors.  I tend to mix it in with other oil paints to get the overall color darker, because it is an oil base.  High Hide Odorless Oil Primer without Sanding – Odorless Primer

Overall Best FURNITURE Primer

*The most surprising thing is that their oil-based primer is thin rather than thick, and it goes on like butter. Considering it is an oil paint, that is rather shocking. This paint seems to have so many features that I just cannot live without now.

*As it dries, the paint strokes often even out.  I tend to use foam brushes after painting with a paint brush.  It is interesting to know this paint evens itself out compared to other oil paints which shows every brush stroke.

*In addition, the paint dries rather quickly. It can be dry within 3 hours, which you can apply another coat. By the next day you can sand, and it sands especially easy after 2 days compared to any other brand.

*This oil paint has teeth! It grips to almost anything without being scratched.

*Also, it is one of the ONLY oil paints that dries to a matte finish. I often add two coats of the primer, then I seal it with a Polycrylic water-based sealer, and then I add Johnson Paste Wax. It produces a perfect Swedish finish. This OIL paint can be tinted most light colors which makes it a dream to work with. It has rejuvenated my passion for painting and I couldn’t be more excited to paint furniture right now.

 
Your Safety and Health

HERE is some caution.  Please take this piece of advice seriously.  You need to wear a protective paint respirator when using oil paints.  This paint contains crystalline silica.  I always wear a respirator when dealing with oil based paints.  This paint contains crystalline silica, which when inhaled causes lung disease such as silicosis and possibly cancer. To avoid breathing in silica, wear a respirator approved for protection against crystalline silica dust.  I almost developed asthma because I sprayed this primer out of a paint sprayer.  Since then, I have thrown away my paint sprayer, only to go back to hand painting.  When you cannot breath, it is not worth it.  Use a respirator when dealing with these toxic paints.

 

If you have success with organic paints, please so email me, and I can post your success stories…..

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