Recolouring IKEA furniture.

[soup]

I bought a Billy bookcase (veneered MDF)from IKEA it was meant to go in my son's room. He already has seven pieces of furniture in there all 'antique oak'. This is darker than the Oak veneer that the new piece is (does that make sense?). It appears Vintage Oak is no longer a colour way for any IKEA products.

I thought of 'painting' the new piece with a coloured (dark oak obs) varnish does the panel think this is a viable option ?

I don't want to go down the 'sticky back plastic' route as rolls of SBP are 2m whilst the unit is 2.02 M tall, and application looks/sounds like a total faff

[nothanks]

Is the veneer wood or plastic? If it's wood you could try sanding it (very! lightly) to remove the lacquer and then apply stain, but test on a hidden piece first because the veneer may be very thin or the stain may not be uniform. TBH it's unlikely to look great so it's probably better to look on feebay, freecycle, etcetera for one that's the right colour.

[Theo]

Billy is printed plastic on chipboard I think, never seen a tree in its life.

I'd second the 'swap' recommendation, much less hassle. In the absence of that I suppose a tinted varnish might be worth a try, since you aren't expecting anything to soak into the surface like a regular stain would.

I'd try it somewhere inconspicuous first as it may look odd.

Theo

[alan_m]

Most of it appears to be:

Basematerial: Particleboard, Paper foil, Plastic edging

Side panel: Particleboard, Paper foil, Melamine foil, Plastic edging

Plinth front: Particleboard, Paper foil

Back: Fibreboard, Paint, Paper foil

The oak versions do state:

Basematerial: Particleboard, Oak veneer, Paper, Clear acrylic lacquer

I have something similar from Ikea with oak veneer but the veneer is ultra thin and possibly the lacquer is thicker.

Perhaps use a dark semi transparent lacquer (or thin coats) to darken the finish. The lacquer may cost more than the cost of the original bookcase :(

[Andy Burns]

website states lacquered oak veneer (over particleboard of course) very light sanding if you don't want to find *how* thin the veneer is ...

[Brian]

We’ve several items of Billy furniture (book cases mainly) in what were our daughters rooms and in my study. They are a light wood veneer finish - Maple at a guess in colour. Certainly not plastic, other than the panels at the back of the bookcases. The veneer has a thin, satin, varnish finish. Some of them must be 25 years or so old and still look all but new.

There is another range, Malm I think, which has a similar / identical style. We have a couple of those in one of the spare rooms.

The veneer is thin, as most veneers are.

[Andrew]

Swedes don't 'do' dark brown furniture :-).

Can you use wet and dry sanding blocks to carefully remove the surface laquer then just get a suitable tin of Ronseal wood dye to change its colour ?.

[Paul]

The suggestion here is, you don't need to sand it.

They use a shellac based primer, presumably as an interface to aid a finish to stick.

That primer is pretty expensive, find a small can.

The White Billy might have a different surface texture than the Birch Billy, so maybe a painting project like this would look better with one than the other.

If the texture isn't going to be a match for oak, maybe you could just paint the thing a "forest colour" to be complementary to the existing oak colours.

Paul

[Martin Brown]

The veneer is ultra thin. You can see just how thin by looking very carefully at the edges of one of the removable shelves.

There might be a darker lacquer you could apply on top but getting the same colour and lustre as the original will be difficult and if you are not very good at applying it will have runs and look a mess.

Incidentally old ones of the same veneer change colour slowly with age. I bought a couple of new ones recently for my ever expanding library and they are lighter than the now twenty year old ones in the same finish.