Painting IKEA Furniture: Melamine

Leading on from the post about painting wood, today I'm talking about the trickier substance of melamine. Not being a fan of the pure white look of it, we decided to add even more colour to our rooms. The shiny surface of melamine can make it difficult to paint because the paint doesn't want to stick. Here is how we managed it. I didn't take that many photos as we went along this time so no fancy slideshow!

Similar to wood, the key is sanding. As you can see from this experiment my boyfriend did on the underside of a shelf without sanding the paint just chips off. Even just the primer didn't help and you can see the scores in the paint. It's worth taking those 5-10 minutes just to make sure everything is done properly.

So far we've only painted a bookshelf, but we plan on tackling the chest of drawers when we can decide on a colour.

Again, the Wilko primer was key after it's been sanded. The colour used is Deeply Plum, and there's three coats. In case you don't recognise it, the piece of furniture transformed is the Billy bookcase.

Painting IKEA furniture is easier than you think, especially once the sanding and priming are out the way. It's a great way to add touches to colour to a space.

Have you transformed any pieces of furniture?