By: Marlene
Home Improvement Tutorials, Inside My Home, , , , ,

How To Paint An Old Laminate Flooring Into a Fresh Scandinavian-inspired White Wood Flooring – DIY Tutorial

You may wonder what to do with used laminate flooring, that is why I asked myself and for a while, I thought I had to replace the flooring entirely but I was WRONG!  I am so pleased to share with you, this DIY tutorial which completely changed the look of my living room and for a cost of less than GBP150. 

BEFORE
AFTER
My new Scandinavian feel white flooring (just paint!)
Before

They say (the people in-the-know) that paint is the single best thing when you want to decorate on a budget but I never thought it also could be applied to flooring until NOW.

I have always envied those beautiful pictures of Scandinavian homes with white painted wood floorboards. For this, you need to have access to the floorboards in your home, but in the living room we had inherited from a laminate / engineered flooring from the late 00s which was a dark orange, its quality is decent (should I say “was” or “is”, I don’t even know) but the colour was not my favourite colour and it may be OK to live with it for a while, but if something bothers you, and you could change it, why not? I could logically agree with the fact that it didn’t make sense to rip apart a good quality flooring for a new one just because I didn’t like the esthetic of its colour, so I got a big white rug instead but still, I could see the orange bits and it bothered me for a while.

Plus, because we live on the first floor of a period maisonette (with downstairs neighbours), we couldn’t just use our original floorboards (which we do have under this laminate!) as our flooring – this would be very noisy for the neighbours and quite inconsiderate so another reason not to have painted floorboards. Even more frustration!

So with those two reasons, I was left thinking I would need to get used to my orange laminate and start saving up for a new flooring one day (Budget estimated:  range of GBP2k to 5k). BUT that was until a visit to my DIY shop where I found a floor paint for LAMINATE. I was surprised, intrigued and skeptical!  I decided to give it a go straight away, and unfortunately, they didn’t have the colour I needed in store – I guess it is not a common DIY project- so I had to order it online.

How I did it and how to do it!

For this living room (about 20 sqm) – Click on links for product info:
For the 6 first products, you can use generic or other brands. Prices can change, check the website for accurate info.

Product List:

The paint pot you see in my picture was discontinued but the product on the link above is the newer product (still works on laminate).

Procedure :

CLEAN  – SAND – CLEAN – PAINT – DRY 3H BETWEEN COATS – APPLY 3 COATS – DRY

BEFORE
The cat toy is not necessary…
After sanding, there will be dust so you need to clean again
Masking Tape to protect the skirting and start with the paintbrush and mini-roller
After 1st coat – Waited two-to-three hours between coats
After 2nd coat
After 3rd coat
After 4th coat (and a bit tired!)
AFTER – Half of the room done

After two days – I decided to do the rest of the room – and move all the furniture to the other side of the room. I had to do it like that because we don’t have spare space to store furniture (I mean this is London!).

It was funny to see half the room white and the other one still dark orange
I repeated the steps
After the first coat

And now the complete look…

Now I see my flooring and I love it so that is a much more positive feeling to have when I am in this room and I am often in my living room as I work from home a lot.

A couple of things to be mindful :

  • It will be more slippery, so adding a few rugs, and having visitors aware of this will avoid potential silly slips. I had a bit of a laugh when the cats were chasing each other as usual through the house and then slide dramatically when they got to the living room. Now with the rugs, it doesn’t happen anymore.
  • You will see more often little dirt like pet hair, human hair (especially if dark)  than before but once you know,  it is just a matter of dusting it more often and getting the right cleaning equipment. I like to use those electrostatic wipes which attract dust and hair for a quick regular cleaning.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, feel free to save it on Pinterest, or share it. This would help my blog grow! 

Thank you and good luck with your future home redecoration projects!

Marlene

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