When Ryan and I first moved in together, he had this old brass lamp. It was tarnished and boring. Luckily, I had just discovered Pinterest, so I was inspired to fix it up with spray paint! But I used a silver spray. And it was ugly. And I made bright aqua rosettes for the lamp shade. Terrible.

guest room lamp before

Fast forward more than a year, and we’re in our newly purchased home, and every time I look at that dumb silver lamp, I cringe. So I decided to remedy the bad spray paint job with, you guessed it, more spray paint! I prepped it by taping up all the sensitive parts (cord, switch, etc.) and wiping it down with liquid deglosser. I skipped any sanding/steel wool buffing because the idea of metallic paint flecks in the air did not get me excited.

I took it outside and gave it a layer of primer. Then I remembered the oil rubbed bronze spray paint is a primer + paint. Oop? Anyway, it didn’t hurt anything, and I continued spraying the piece with its new, dark paint.

spray paint a lamp

A few hours of drying and a $20 Target lampshade later, this relic from the 1980s was looking pretty fine. It’s looks right at home in the guest room, and I’m sure any future guests will appreciate its presence.

spray paint a lamp target lamp shade

Total project cost? Just the lampshade. We had all the paint on hand. Not bad, eh? Let’s all remind ourselves what this room looked like a couple of weeks ago.

guest room before

Yeah. Yikes. But now, we can actually have a guest stay with us!

valspar coastal cliff

Let’s revisit our to-do list.

  • Paint the walls
  • Hang window treatments
  • Replace the futon with a sofa bed to create more space when people aren’t staying for the night
  • Ditch the fan that makes the ceiling seem so much lower
  • Work on the furniture and make the storage prettier
  • Maybe a big rug for the center of the floor? But only if we get a sofa bed
  • Put something on the walls. Frame collage? One large panorama photo?

It does’t seem like we’ve done much, but it’s made a big difference. The lamp wasn’t on the list, but it needed some fixin’.

Have you ever tried to spray paint a lamp? How did it turn out?

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