What Is Bleed Through On Furniture?
In this online training we're talking all about furniture bleed through and how to fix it!
What Is Bleed Through?
Bleed through is when the tannins or oils bleed through your paint, showing up as yellow, brown or pink marks. Normally it only shows up through lighter coloured paints.
What Causes Bleed Through?
There are multiple reasons why you might get bleed through. It can be caused by oil stains or drink rings, the natural tannins in the wood coming through, pen marks (especially from highlighters or permanent markers), extreme sun damage or even nicotine if the furniture was in a heavy smokers house!
Some woods naturally bleed through more than others, teak is a good example! And for those woods, try painting in a darker colour from the get-go.
How Can I Stop Bleed Through?
Fortunately bleed through is a pretty easy fix!
Firstly, don't sand off your lacquer or polyurethane before painting. This is acting as a sealer already which we don't want to remove.
Paint your first coat on as normal. If you see any yellow, brown, pink or dark spots come through, spot paint them with our Premium Lacquers. It doesn't matter if you use Matte, Satin or Gloss as it will be painted over.
Tip: Lightly sand your chalk paint before applying your lacquer if you don't want extra texture. Remember that your lacquer will reflect any texture that is underneath.
Do one or two coats of lacquer depending on how dark the bleed through is.
Paint straight back over with your chalk paint and continue as normal!
Facebook Live:
Watch our Facebook live video where we showed a real life example of bleed through on a recent piece we've been working on.
Further Training
Make sure to check out our other training posts on our blog, all can be searched by 'category'.