A Bedroom Refresh with Farrow & Ball Paint

Back in February we teamed with Farrow & Ball to announce Nine New Colors added to their 132-color collection. This month, Remodelista editors are putting the colors to work in our own homes. Last week Danny enlivened his home office with Vardo, and today Alexa refreshes some furniture using Worsted and Salon Drab.

For Alexa, who lives in a Brooklyn Heights rental apartment, painting low-cost furniture is one of the smartest design tricks in her arsenal. “It gives an extra, noncommittal splash of color to any room,” she says. Alexa’s bedroom needed some sprucing up, so she set to work with an affordable chest of drawers and an antique farm stool.

Finished Product

Above: Alexa’s bedroom, with new dresser in Worsted and stool in Salon Drab.

The Process

Above: Alexa started with Ikea’s solid-pine Tarva 5-Drawer Chest. She prepared each piece individually before assembling the dresser; not having to contend with constructed corners made far quicker work of the project.

Above: Alexa first primed each piece with Farrow & Ball’s Interior Wood Primer & Undercoat, which comes in four tints suited to the final paint color; Alexa used the tint for “Mid Tones.” She says that the extra time she devoted to priming the wood was critical to achieving the smooth finish she was after.

Above: She next applied spackle to the pre-drilled holes meant for drawer pulls, since she wanted a totally flat front. She then painted each dresser piece in two coats of Worsted—a color named for the English village known for producing worsted wool suiting fabric.

Above: Alexa was delighted to find that Worsted is “surprisingly pastel. It’s the perfect moody backdrop for a Belgian-inspired still life,” she says.

Above: Next, Alexa purchased a simple vintage wood stool on Etsy to use as a bedside table.

Above: She didn’t want to sand it, so two coats of Farrow & Ball’s Interior Wood Primer & Undercoat did the trick.

Above: She painted the stool in two coats of Farrow & Ball’s Salon Drab, a brown color with a lot of depth. “It has a great olive undertone,” says Alexa, “that actually feels very Mediterranean.”

Follow along over the next few weeks as Remodelista editors overhaul their spaces using Farrow & Ball’s Nine New Colors. See our first post—on Danny’s office transformation—in A Vibrant Office Update from Farrow & Ball.