How To Paint a Perfect Beach Dresser

You may not be lucky enough to live at the beach, but you can bring a little bit of the beach into your bedroom with this fun and easy painted furniture DIY project. No need to clean any sand out of your car! This tutorial will show you how to paint the perfect beach dresser—no sunscreen required!

Here’s the “before” shot of the beach dresser. It had already been painted brown when I found it and it spent waaaaaay too much time in my garage waiting for its painted furniture makeover. You can create this look on any piece of furniture with enough space to separate into a “water” and a “sand” section. (You might even find the perfect project piece up at The Top of the Shop at our store All Things New Again in Leesburg, Virginia.)

How To Paint the Perfect Beach Dresser

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I started with a quick base coat of one of Dixie Belle Paint Company’s turquoise colors called The Gulf. This is the same color I used on my sister’s Ikea kitchen table makeover. I didn’t sand or prime my sister’s laminate table. I didn’t sand or prime this high-gloss brown dresser either. Dixie Belle Paint sticks nicely to pretty much anything. Just make sure you clean the piece really well first.

For the second coat, I blended the The Gulf with two other Dixie Belle blues—Sea Glass and Pure Ocean—to create the “water” section of the beach dresser.

It’s a soft, subtle look because the three blues I used are so close in color to each other, but there is just enough difference to give the piece a shimmery, water effect—like gentle waves on a lazy summer day.

It isn’t a flawless finish—and I like it that way! The dresser had a lot of little imperfections due to its age and the previous paint job. I figured the beach isn’t perfect so the beach dresser shouldn’t be either.

Notice I didn’t  paint the bottom blue. I left space for the “sand” section.

I used a product called Dixie Belle Mud to create the sandy texture. Dixie Belle Mud comes in three colors—black, brown and white—and was created to use for those beautiful raised stencils everybody is putting on their furniture.

I always like to get double-duty out of my paint products. I used brown Dixie Belle Mud on the bottom section of the beach dresser. Instead of smoothing the Mud on with a putty knife like you would for a raised stencil, I pounced it on with a paintbrush to create lots of texture. When it dried, I painted over it with Dixie Belle’s sandy Burlap color. When the paint dried, I sanded gently to reveal the brown Mud underneath and soften the texture just a bit.

I pounced white paint with a stencil brush to create the foamy waves around the shoreline.

I painted this beach dresser as part of our Furniture Painting Friday series over on our All Things New Again Facebook page. If you would like to see detailed video tutorials on these techniques (and more!) just head over to our Facebook page and search #beachdresser.

One of the nice things about painting a piece in front of a live audience every week is we can bounce ideas off of each other. I was originally planning on replacing those big brown knobs with crystal knobs, but somebody suggested shells instead. Then somebody else suggested starfish.

I found BOTH! (and some really cute little fishies too) over on Amazon. I bought a variety pack of 12 sea-themed knobs—and they are all super-cute. Here’s a link if you want to check them out.

I think the little sea creature knobs are the perfect finishing touch on this fun project! BONUS: I have four knobs leftover for another project down the road.

Here’s the Beach Dresser!

Thank you for visiting the All Things New Again Blog today!

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All Things New Again is a family-owned furniture and paint boutique in Leesburg, Virginia, about an hour or so west of Washington, D.C. We sell hand-painted furniture, several lines of paint for your next DIY project, and offer fun painting classes and workshops. Stop by the next time you are in town!

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Friday’s Furniture Fix #104

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