How to Stain Laminate Furniture

This is such a simple DIY if you have a basic laminate or particle board piece of furniture that you want to elevate and give a fresh look!

This was a pretty inexpensive bed frame that we used in our guest bedroom at our house in Florida that definitely had a more “farmhouse” look. We are giving this headboard to a friend but it wasn’t his vibe and didn’t match any of his other furniture so we knew we had to change that.

We started by using ‘Retique It’ which is basically liquid wood. You paint it on a hard surface to give it a ‘wood effect’ and then you’re able to stain over top. The bed looks like wood, but it’s actually laminate, so we couldn’t sand it or stain over without first using the Retique It.

We painted the entire headboard with the Retique It and also painted the side boards and footboard of the bed. We did one coat all over and let it dry. We could tell pretty quickly that it was working! The texture started to look and feel like real wood.

Once it dried we did a second coat and it really made an even bigger difference and gave it a real wood feel! After the second coat dried we stained right on top of it. After letting the stain dry for a day or so, we sprayed over the top of it with an oil-based stain.

The result was mind-blowing! It came out even better than I expected and truly looked like a new piece of furniture! You would never know it wasn’t worth thousands of dollars.