Number Fifty-Three: How to Paint Mahogany Furniture White

Good Morning!

My first response to the topic of How to Paint Mahogany Furniture White is to just honestly not do it! It's a lot more work that painting a lighter wood, say pine or maple, and you have to seriously take precaution against bleed through. However, if you are faced with a mahogany piece that needs to go light, here are my tips.

First, sand as little as possible. While you do want to rough up the piece to accept paint, you want to avoid getting down to the bare wood. That will release the tannins and cause bleed through.

My before piece...

Seal the piece with a shellac. This helps to prevent bleed through and gives you a clean surface to paint. It will also stop bleed through once its begun. My favorite shellac is this one.

Here is the same dresser after sanding with just primer...

The next thing I do is prime. I think it's good to use an adhesion primer since there hasn't been any heavy duty sanding and a shellac has been applied.

After that, continue on as normal, apply your chosen light colored paint and finishing sealer.

Here is that same piece finished. The combo of shellac and primer sealed and covered the stains so I could get a smooth finish.

I hope this quick tutorial helps. I definitely understand the panic when you see bleed though on a piece of old furniture, but as of late, I have had great success with this technique.

In the end, working with vintage and antique pieces are so incredibly temperamental. Even though I have been doing this for nearly six years I still find that there are challenges and learning curves along the way.