Painting Ikea Cribs

megstriesagain · May 2010

I saw someone below had painted their Ikea crib - did you do anything special to it before painting it or use a special type of paint? An Ikea salesperson once told me that their unfinished products could be painted, but that the finished products wouldn't hold the paint and it would look awful because of the glaze they use - maybe that was just a sales technique? But I hate the beech color of the crib we bought and would love to paint it white if it will work...OTOH, was it a total PITA to paint each slat?

K.a.T.e · May 2010

do you have the gulliver? it comes in both white and birch.

chazlewo · May 2010

i bought the white one, sanded the glaze off... my FIL painted it for us using a paint sprayer (used low VOC latex paint, i think he had to mix it with a little thinner so it would spray evenly) the only PITA is letting it dry and dry and dry... it probably would have been a lot harder to use a brush than the sprayer.

ecleptic · May 2010

megstriesagain:
I saw someone below had painted their Ikea crib - did you do anything special to it before painting it or use a special type of paint? An Ikea salesperson once told me that their unfinished products could be painted, but that the finished products wouldn't hold the paint and it would look awful because of the glaze they use - maybe that was just a sales technique? But I hate the beech color of the crib we bought and would love to paint it white if it will work...OTOH, was it a total PITA to paint each slat?

Don't skip sanding- their natural wood colors have a light glaze on them. I tested a dresser we have from them for acrylic (Latex) paint and let a corner of the primer dry on the bare wood. After drying- the paint was easily peeled back up. I tried a very light sanding then just to see if we could get away with minimal fuss and that also peeled back up.

It didn't look bad- it just peeled... which is not a good quality for a crib. Sand thoroughly before painting.