Wardrobes can make a significant difference in the appearance of your bedroom. Outdated, bland wardrobes can make your bedroom look boring and very dull indeed. If you’re sick of the ancient look you can do something very simple to change that. This article will show you that spicing up dull wardrobes can be very easy and extremely cheap to do.
Take one week-end, a couple packs of crisps, some junk food, a spare couple of hands, and you’re ready to spice up and update the old, boring wardrobe in your bedroom. Here’s what I did to mine.
Spicing up dull wardrobes
ancient bedroom cupboards
COST: £0.00 (if you already have spare paint lying around in the shed)
TIME: 1 hour or less (in other words - a Saturday afternoon job).
Tip: recycle old cupboard handles or purchase from second-hand shops. I had these (kept from another cupboard) in the shed. Remember you can remove old handles and paint them too! Different or new handles go a long way to updating your cupboards. I recommend them.
A newer, streamlined look, with some of the old cupboards removed
How to spice up your wardrobe:
1. Remove handles and sand front of drawers (it’s best to remove the entire drawer and do this outside if you can).
2. If you don’t want to sand drawers, just cover with a universal primer.
3. When primer is dry, just paint over with emulsion or oil paint.
4. Note: if you use emulsion paint (like I did here) you’ll have to cover it with clear varnish to make the paint last.
5. When paint is completely dry, replace handles. Here are some fantastic, cheap bedroom cupboard door handles I love.
6. If you want to do a bit more work, you can also paint the front of the cupboard in the same way.
Spice up your old wardrobes
You definitely do not have to go out and buy new cupboards. It’s not worth the mess and cost. In this case all we did was remove the surplus cupboards and add a mirror. We changed the outdated door handles, then painted the front of the smaller cupboards. Add a vanity stool like this one we bought to finish the look - if you like. This is a simple fix, but it’s cheap and looks great. Here’s the complete make-over of the room in question.
And once you’ve finished spicing up your dull wardrobes, you can also see several other ways of improving your interior design cheaply and quickly. This page tells you how - and how much they’ll cost. You can also see great things to make for your home at affordable prices.
About Anne
Anne Lyken-Garner, the owner of
DIY Projects is the published author of the inspirational memoir, Sunday's Child (available on Amazon). She's also a freelance writer, blogger and editor. She writes for, and manages 4 blogs. See how Anne can help you with editing your site at the
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awesome make over! pretty colors for children Anne! This creation is one of my favorite.
I have done the same for my young daughter. Her personality is just vibrant and full of life, and I have recently installed more drawers for storage of her toys and personal items. Some are mobile storage, which I bought from a local store. Some of the storage cabinets look bland with lifeless color, so I thought of repainting it to give it more vibrancy. My daughter loved it. She was delighted to have so much bright colors in her bedroom. The cost of doing it was cheap, too. I did not have to burst my budget to have such happiness written all over my daughter’s face.
Very feasible and doable. This will make my mom happy upon seeing my new wardrobe. Great post!
Perhaps ask her permission first? 🙂
It transformed to a stunning wardrobe! It is just amazing how a little paint can make a major change in the look of your wardrobe.
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Twitter: HardworkinJudy
June 2, 2012 at 10:08 pm #
Ohhh! I love this!
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Great job! It added some light to the wardrobe! I usually do some artistic painting jobs myself in my room too. 🙂
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Art would be lovely too, Sara. I did some of that in our last house on the bedroom cupboard. It looked great.
Love what a little paint can do for a wardrobe. I should use this for my son’s room. Just to add more color to it. I might have some extra paint lying around in the garage. Must go check if I have multiple colors. Thanks for the inspiration.
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You’re welcome, Brian. Let me know if you run into any problems.
Great tips, Anne. Oil painting is the best and easiest way to make our wardrobes look new and colorful but instead of that I found people hesitate to do oil painting on their wardrobes as they thought they could mess up with them but I think they should have a try and it will not be a big blender if they can’t do it properly first time.
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Yes, I think you’re right. People are scared they could mess it up. The reason I used emulsion paint is because I had some samples of them lying around in my shed. I wanted to save as much money as possible, and show that you can do this with your ‘leftovers’ rather than shop for new paint.
If your wardrobe isn’t wood (if it’s made of formica or other material) you need to either use a sealant before using normal paint, or buy special paint suitable for your material.
I have been thinking about this for a long time, replacing the handles on my dresser, but there isn’t enough spare time in the day to get down to business. With caring for my mom and my son, I just want to have a few hours to work on my blogs.
HI Icy,
Thanks for dropping by. It really doesn’t take that much time. You could do one each evening or a couple at the week-end. Maybe one day your son can look after your mum or the other way around and give you some free time for yourself. 🙂