What paint can be used for painting kitchen doors?

What paint can be used for painting kitchen doors? Are Farrow and Ball paints suitable for kitchen furniture? Can we use Dulux, Crown, Little Greene and Annie Sloan or any similar brands for furniture finishing ?

What paint can be used for painting kitchen doors and furniture?

Despite several DIY’s type of tutorials, blogs and videos showing how easy and simple is painting furniture by ourselves, I want to warn all readers of this article and highlight consequences before they decide to use common DIY paints for painting furniture surface.

Acrylic and oil based paints that you can buy online or in local DIY stores including B&Q , Homebase or Dulux Centre are great paints but dedicated for painting walls, ceilings and woodwork however not for furniture. For applying these paints we can use classic painting tools as roller or brush.

DIY paints are not heat and alcohol resistant, easy catching dirt and stains as per pictures attached below. Please check my other post in regards to problem with furniture white rings on acrylic surfaces.

I’ve recently joined few UK’s furniture spraying forums on Facebook and I’m actually shocked watching painters decorators who converting theirs garages / sheds into something pretending to be a spray booth, trying to paint kitchen doors and other furniture without any knowlage about spraying techniques.

Please be aware that if you use one of DIY paints on your furniture the finish will be ruined within few weeks or months of usage, as the paint will catch any dirt and you will not be able to simply clean or wipe off. So let say you have recently painted your kitchen using Dulux Briliant White and just split on your doors red wine, hot oil or orange juice – please be aware that all stains will remain on the paint work and to fix the damage all effected kitchen doors will need to be repainted again.
Paint chipping and peeling off!!

DIY paints are usually more thicker than furniture lacquers so even if we would like to use them with our quality pressure spray system it will create much thicker coat than allowed in data sheet of the product. Applying and recoating too much paint will effect in easy chipping and peeling off. Have you ever experienced situation when paint is coming off with a sticker or note left on painted surface? – this is happening when you use standard much softer paint on top of way harder and solid furniture lacquer that has been originally been applied on the piece of furniture,

This kitchen below has recently arrived to our workshop for respraying. Based on information provided by client this kitchen was painted a year ago by brush using Farrow and Ball matt finish.

Why sprayers need workshop and spray booth? Why we are taking kitchen doors to be sprayed off site?

As mentioned earlier Facebook spraying forums showed me how creative painters can be, offering painting kitchen in situ without taking doors off. There is two main reasons why quality finish cannot be achieved in this way:

The first reason is that all doors and cupboards are full of grease and dust. When you spray with air pressure gun all surrounded dust and dirt, from above of upper cupboards or insides of units is picking up, flying and sticking everywhere to wet paint. In spray booth all air is filtered that’s why the final finish is so flat and smooth.

The second reason is that all panels must be sprayed in horizontal flat position with good access to all edges. Please do not expect good finish if you spray in vertical position,

One more suggestion is that you don’t want to have door ironmongery to be sprayed over so imagine scraping off all paint from door handles and hinges after painting, no matter how hard you try it’s never going to look good.

This how it looks typical finish of Dulux paints sprayed in situ:

So what paints we can actually use for kitchen doors?

This is a moment when you need to contact professional furniture spraying workshop who use polyester, polyurethane or acid lacquers. Furniture lacquers needs special temperature and air moisture set for spraying that’s why typical spray workshop must invest minimum 10k for quality spray booth and another 10k for proper compressors, filters, dry racks, spray guns and other equipment. This is why professional spray workshops charge a bit more than painters and decorators. – Please note that you pay for technology, quality and perfection.

How durable is the finish?

As you can see on the pictures below the finish is amazing and smooth without any brush lines, drips, dirt and any imperfections in the surface. The quality of finish well compare to car bodywork finish so you can almost keep it outdoor on the rain and with good paint coverage it shouldn’t happen anything to the furniture. Also furniture lacquers especially polyurethane are flexible so perfectly work with doors and all movable elements of furniture. The finish is heat / cold and alcohol resistant so you can now split red wine on white table top and simply wipe off.
Non fading / UV resistant formula !!

Please note that all PU and Polyester finish have 10 years guarantee on UV protection. All paints and especially white will not go yellowish within this period of time. Speak to painters and they will confirm that is a very common problem that even the most expensive top branded high gloss oil based paints will fade and change its colour to off white within a short time.

What if my furniture has been already painted with DIY paint?

We recommend to strip existing finish and respray in a proper furniture lacquer.

Please watch this video to see example  brush finish conversion into smooth high gloss lacquer :

So how is comes that on your You Tube channel you show kitchens sprayed in Farrow and Ball and Dulux paint colours?

Our furniture lacquers supplier providing colour matching service, so for example F&B Railings 20% semi matt project is actually matched colour but not original F&B paint. We use chart books of popular brands as an indication. Depending on chosen paint all colour mixes are in 95-99% the same as originals.

For more information about our kitchen spraying service please visit our FAQ page or email us,

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