Dry Brush Paint Technique

Dry brush painting is a technique where the brush has virtually no paint and you are actually painting with a “dry” brush. It is an excellent technique to distress furniture and has the benefit that you can more acurately control the degree of distressing. The technique can be used with or without layering. If you want the natural wood grain to show through, the paint is brushed with a dry brush directly onto the bare wood. Altenatively, you can put on a base coat first and when it is completely dry use the technique with another paint colour to dry brush on top of the base colour. In both cases it should be sealed with a furniture wax or a glaze coat or a polyurithane sealer.

Dry brush paint technique on old buro

How to Dry Brush

There are two key elements to achieve a good dry brush finish – the amount of paint on your brush and the speed with which you go through the process.  To dry brush on a bare piece of wood the following steps can be followed:

• 1.       Drabble a little paint on the underside of the lid or on a paper plate.

• 2.       Take your brush and lightly dip it in the paint.

• 3.       Dab the brush on a piece of cloth or a paper towel to remove excess paint. The tip of the brush must be “dry” with only a hint of paint on it.

• 4.       Apply the paint along the grain of the wood.

• 5.       Repeat the process but the wood must noyt be completely covered so that the grain shows through.

• 6.       When the paint is dry you can sand with a fine sand paper (360 grit) to distress rounded edges and areas you want it to look distressed.

• 7.       Finally seal the paint with wax or polyurithane sealer.

• Dry brushing pdifferent paint layers can give a nice distressed look. The procedure is much then same as described but the base colour should of course be painted first. The paint must be completely dry before the dry brush technique is applied. Always seal the paint.

Best paint to use

Milk paint and chalk paint are particularly suited for dry brushing. When layering two or more colours my preference is to paint the base coat in a good Latex paint. The top colours can be layered in chalk or milk paint. 

Which colour you use to paint the base coat is a matter of personal choice but for distressing I prefer to paint the darker colour first and then to dry brush the lighter colour(s). What you are trying to achieve is the look of old paint showing through a newer coat of paint. It is for this reason that I use two dry brushes. The first is to apply the paint and the second is to blend in the top coat. 

Best brushes to use

Any good quality brush will do. For applying the paint I prefer a brush with short, stiff bristels. The reason is that you dont want an even spread of paint but rather to get a streaky effect. I take one of my older brushes and then I cut the bristles with a scicors to get an uneven brush tip. The second dry brush should have regular soft bristles so that you can lightly even out and blend in the strokes of paint. The trick is to apply the paint and immediately go over the paint with the second brush to blend in the paint while it is still wet.