Annie Sloan’s Tips for Adding Colour to Your Staircase

Credit: Christopher Drake

Annie Sloan demonstrates how to paint create a colourful staircase that exudes personality

Decorative painter Annie Sloan teaches you how to add colour to your wooden staircase

Annie Sloan, a U.K.-based expert decorative painter, best-selling author and creator of Chalk Paint™ decorative paint, will be speaking at the Vancouver Home and Design Show on October 19.

Her newest book, Colour Recipes for Painted Furniture and More, is full of useful paint techniques including distressing, colourwashing, decoupaging, stenciling, and creating faux marble effects. The following is a fun DIY project pulled from her book on how to add some colour to a plain wooden staircase.

How to Paint Your Staircase

1. Use a flat two-inch synthetic brush that can easily get into the edges and corners. Don’t overload the brush to avoid paint pooling and making raised edges.
2. Aim for a group of some dark and light neutrals, many cool colours, and just a few warm colours. The hot bright colours will pop against the cooler stripes. Repeat each colour several times, especially the neutrals and cool colours. Sample pots are a good way to use a lot of colours economically.
3. Blur the definition of the stairs and give things an interesting twist by using a wobbly hand when painting and varying the width and placement of the stripes.