Velvet Finishes Bed Makeover

Well friends, I did it. I painted our 15-year-old traditional four-poster bed. After years of not being happy with the tone of the wood, I finally just went for it. And a. I’m so in love with it now and b. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be!

Before

To jog your memory and bring the new people around here up to date, here is how she looked before said paint job. I’d been unhappy with the red undertones in the mahogany for many years, and in the bedroom of our new home, my dislike for the color of the wood only grew.

The reddish undertones just did not jive with the color of our wood floors and beams at all.

So I did some research and came across Velvet Finishes, a brand of paint I’d heard of but never used before. This paint requires no sanding, no priming, and no waxing, and best of all it doesn’t show brushstrokes!

The Easy 3-Step How-To

I ordered their recommended three-step system – ready, color, enhance – and got to work.

Step One – I started by spraying on Ready, allowing it to sit for a few minutes before wiping it away with a lint-free rag. This step is meant to de-gloss the surface of whatever you’re painting for the best paint adhesion. So if your piece is still shiny after you use Protect, you might want to repeat this step. You should have a flat finish before you move on to painting.

This spray is pretty odorless, so working indoors is no problem at all.

Step Two – Once I was done wiping down the bed, I got to work painting! I chose the color luxurious, which is a pretty charcoal black. I used this short angled brush which allowed me to get into the grooves of the carved wood easily. This paint dries fairly quickly, so I found it helpful to load my brush pretty well and completely cover a section before moving on to the next.

The entire bed was covered in just two coats! And I’m so impressed with how smooth the finish looks!

Step Three – Protect is a finishing topcoat, a satin polyurethane. I used a brush to apply it once the paint was completely dry. I waited an entire 24 hours before applying it to be sure the paint was dry, but I don’t think that long of a wait time was necessary. This topcoat is very thin – almost like painting with water – so a little goes a long way.

This process was pretty painless, and I’m so happy with our bed now! The power of paint always blows my mind!

After

This room still has a long way to go! But I’m so happy with the direction it’s going in now that the bed is black. This one simple change made all the difference! You can see I opted for the floral duvet, and I love the color and pattern! This green pulls the outdoors into this space.

I’m looking forward to finishing our master bedroom next year. But I’m already so much happier with the way our room looks and feels now.

Let me know in the comments section if you have any questions about the Velvet Finishes painting process. I am very impressed with this paint! One thing that blew me away was how little of the paint you need. I only used half of that 32 oz. paint container pictured above for this bed makeover!