Painting furniture is an excellent way of adding some freshness and vigor to the home decor. If you put in some of your creative ideas into it, the paint job can be a lot of fun too. Before you apply any paint on the furniture, you have to prepare its surface. Take a piece of 100 grit sandpaper and rub it on all the surfaces of the furniture with a gentle hand in order to clean up the dirt and debris stuck on them. Next, apply an even coat of primer, so that the paint can last on the furniture for a long time. Now, the furniture is ready and you can take up the task of applying paint on it. There are many styles of painting the home furniture. It can be traditional, contemporary, antique, etc. Here, an important thing has to be kept in mind that the paint should merge well with overall interior decoration of the house. Traditional Style For conventional decoration, traditional ideas are the best. You can keep the basic color as black and make the detailing work in gold, red or cream. To give a French provincial look, a combination of soft cream with a hint of gold is just fine. Other colors that suit this style are solid white or glossy black. For an Asian flavor, use a beautiful highly polished red lacquer. If you are looking for elegance, the final touch for the painted furniture should be with either layers of beeswax, which has been buffed well or a high-gloss polyurethane. Antique Style Some people prefer to get the peeling and distressed paint look of antique furniture. Believe me, this can be created on your furniture too. This style is suitable mostly for the kitchen and the family room. The colors that are usually chosen for this style are white, red, green, yellow or blue. First, start with sanding the furniture, and then apply latex paint. When the paint has cured, sand it once again in certain spots to get the worn out look. A slight touch of dilute paint here and there on your painted furniture will improve its visual appeal. A fun element can be added to this style by making some freehand designs like herringbone patterns over the painted surface. Contemporary Style This style will suit if the lines, curves and shapes of the furniture are distinct. For this, the colors should be bright and attractive like glossy black, rich espresso brown, etc. Ideally, a small foam roller is used to apply the paint on the furniture instead of a brush, so that the brush marks do not appear. To maintain its freshness and warmth, avoid any intricate detail work or wood finishes. Just apply a coat of high-gloss polyurethane after the paint has dried up. Decorative Painting Ideas Apply a white color paint to the furniture and allow it to dry up properly. You can draw some images or patterns on the painted surface using a pencil. Fill in the drawn images with suitable colors and allow it to dry under the sun, if possible. Mark the outlines of the images with the help of a dark color paint pen to make them distinct. Finally, put a coat of paint finish and wait till it dries up. Thus, your paint job is done. Hope you liked the ideas given in this article. Before concluding, I want to give you two important tips. Keep in mind that the work area should be well-ventilated as oil-based primers and paints have foul odor. When you apply the paint on the furniture, make sure you start doing it from the top and move downwards.