Painting an Upholstered Chair

I keep seeing and hearing about painted upholstered chairs and thought it would be a good option for someone who can't reupholster (i.e. ME). Then, once I saw my friend's chairs she painted, I loved how they looked and decided to go for it. Look how cute hers are!

 

 

Adorable, right?

 

I used a chair I bought at a resell shop that I have been meaning to reupholster. I liked the look of the chair, but the velvet fabric was a little outdated and had some small stains on it.

 

Here is the chair before:

 

 

Here is another picture that shows the color more accurately.

 

 

You may remember it from this post.

 

 I was a little nervous to paint a chair I already liked, but once I got started, I liked the way the white looked. It provided more of a contrast to the color of the wood.

 

 

Here you can see the difference between the white painted part and the original.

 

 

 I thought about leaving the pins and the trim in the original color, but in the end, I wanted to keep it simple. I'm really glad I did.

 

I used white fabric paint from Michael's. The fabric paint makes the paint not as rough as wall paint would. I knew the paint would make the fabric more stiff, but I did not realize how quickly the fabric soaks up the paint. I probably used about six bottles of fabric paint on this one chair.

 

Here is the final product:

 

 

I like it much more in the white than the original faded gold-ish velvet fabric. Overall, it was a fairly quick and easy update!