We’ve been in this exact situation — a chalk paint colour that looked perfect on the tin but turned out considerably darker (or paler, or greener, or more pink) on the actual cabinet than we’d expected. The good news is that painting over chalk paint is genuinely straightforward, and in some respects easier than painting over conventional paint. Here’s exactly how we’d approach it.
The Good News About Chalk Paint as a Base
Chalk paint’s porous, matte surface actually provides a reasonably good key for most subsequent paint types, which means you have quite a lot of flexibility in what you can apply on top of it. You’re not locked into only using chalk paint again, and you don’t necessarily need a specialised primer to make the new colour stick.
Painting Chalk Paint Over Chalk Paint
The simplest route if you want to stay in the chalk paint family is simply applying the new colour directly on top of the existing one. If the existing colour is significantly lighter than the new one you want, one to two coats will usually achieve good coverage as we cover in our guide on how many coats of chalk paint kitchen cabinets need. If you’re going the other direction — a new light colour over an existing dark one — expect to need an additional coat and possibly a light seal with a white shellac primer between the old and new colours to prevent the dark base showing through.
Painting Conventional Paint Over Existing Chalk Paint
If you want to switch from chalk paint to a conventional satin or eggshell kitchen paint, a light sand of the chalk paint surface with 240-grit paper followed by a coat of an adhesion primer gives you a solid base. The chalk paint’s porosity means you shouldn’t skip the primer in this scenario, since the conventional paint will absorb differently into the chalk-painted surface than it would into a primed surface and you may get uneven coverage or adhesion issues if you go straight onto the existing chalk without any preparation.
What About the Existing Wax or Sealant?
If your existing chalk paint has already been waxed or sealed — as we’d always recommend it should be for kitchen use, as described in our guide on whether chalk paint needs sealing — the wax layer needs to be addressed before any new paint will adhere properly. Wax repels water-based paint. You can strip the wax with a wax remover product, or you can apply a good shellac-based primer over the wax which will bond to both the wax and the subsequent paint coat. The shellac route is generally easier than stripping wax fully and we’d lean toward it for a cabinet repaint.
Our Recommended Process
Clean the surface thoroughly, remove or prime over any wax, apply a light sand, apply the appropriate primer if switching paint types, then apply your new colour in the same way you would any cabinet repaint. The full preparation details for a kitchen cabinet paint project are covered in our guide on how to get a smooth finish on kitchen cabinets, and the principles apply directly here.
Our Honest Advice
Don’t let the prospect of repainting chalk paint put you off changing a colour you don’t like. It’s one of the more forgiving paint types to paint over, and with the right approach the new colour will cover it completely with no ghost of the original showing through. We’ve repainted chalk-painted surfaces more than once without incident when we changed our minds about a colour, and the process has been consistently straightforward each time.