Painting Office Furniture

Let’s talk office furniture.   Not necessarily the pretty home office you’ve created for yourself, but the office building office furniture.  The most-likely-not-real-wood, brown stained, super-heavy office furniture.  You know the type.  But do you know that most office furniture can be painted?

I refinished an entire set of office furniture for a local law firm that moved into a modern office space.  There was a large sideboard cabinet, a small sideboard cabinet, and two conference tables.

Some of the pieces were real wood, some were imitation.  They all had a satin to glossy sheen to them.

The two cabinets were the same brown stain tone, but the conference tables were each different.  Needless to say, there were a lot of different brown tones going on in this office that was now modern gray.

So what is the solution when you have several mismatched furniture pieces and you’d like a space to feel more cohesive and calm?  Paint.

Bring all of the pieces together with the same color paint.

Normally I wouldn’t recommend a houseful of matching furniture.  A home is a place fill with curated with pieces you love.  Each piece should tell a story and you should enjoy each piece of furniture individually and how they all come together.

But an office is different.  In an office, you want to be able to focus on the work and not have the furniture distract from the mission of the office.  Office furniture (in an office building) should, in most cases, be present, useful, and basically look nice and professional, but not distract.

I know there are exceptions to this rule and some newer office suites are decorated much more vibrant to “spark creativity”;  but here I’m talking about your standard office suite that has lots of mismatched brown furniture that’s been around for several years (decades even) and needs a modern makeover.

The color you choose to paint the furniture doesn’t have to be black.  That just happens to be the color this particular client chose.  It could be any shade of gray, blue, taupe, cream, green, or any other color of the rainbow.

The important thing, if you’re planning to paint office furniture, whether it’s real wood or not, is to choose the right paint.

My ebook, Painting Furniture, can help with that…

Enamel Paint

The best paint I’ve found for this type of job is enamel.

I’ve been using enamel paint on furniture for the past few years.  It is unlike other paints (latex, milk, chalk).  First and foremost, it’s the most durable paint finish I’ve found.  It comes in a high-gloss and low lustre finish.  And, for the most part, it’s a one-step application process for those trying it for the first time.

There are always techniques that can improve the final finish of any paint – prep, thinning, the type of brush, and mixing sheens.  As a professional furniture painter, I’ve experimented and learned several techniques that make application easier and take the final result from nice to absolutely stunning.

Here’s the large conference table.  You can read all the refinishing details in that original post HERE.

And here are the other three furniture pieces.