Repurposed Dining Chairs with Dulux Colour of the Year Palette

In today’s post I’m showcasing a little project I’ve been working on recently in collaboration with Dulux and the Colour of the Year, Spiced Honey.

I spend a lot of time sat at my dining table – it’s my working area of choice when I’m at home, since the husband took over the little office with his music, hifi and pc!

I was starting to feel a little bored with the whole area though and, whilst I can’t justify a new table, I could do something about the chairs and give the set a new look and feel.

Let’s start with how the set looked before I started. You might be familiar with it.

It’s an extendable Ikea table which cost me around £120 and opens up to seat 6 of us comfortably. As we use the room for a multitude of purposes (we call it the dining den) the table needs to sit neatly in the corner of the room.

It’s not ideal. We don’t use it as much as we should, and it does become a little bit of a dumping area. Nevertheless, it serves the purpose when we need it so it works ok.

The chairs are a mix of two different types; I can’t remember where they’re from now but think the non-metal legs are from Habitat. They are my favourite and the most comfortable, so I thought it might be nice to add a little more colour to the set and remove the metal legged versions.

Dulux had asked me if I’d like to test out a 2019 colour palette based around the Dulux Colour of the Year, Spiced Honey. Whilst I wasn’t going to include the actual colour on the chairs, the table itself represents this shade perfectly, showing how you can introduce the hue into your current scheme.

Here’s the palette I worked with. It’s called the Dream Palette and it’s packed full of glorious pastels.

The ‘Dream’ palette is a gently muted mix of romantic powder pinks and blues that create calm. Plain pale woods, simple hand-thrown vessels and pretty fabrics add to the contemplative, centered feel of this space.

The colours I’ve chosen to play around with are:

Vintage Smoke
Floating Petal
Concrete Grey
Restful Slumber
Calming Chamomile
Heart Wood
Gentle Moon

And a quick shout out on my local Facebook group meant I was able to snap up these old, vintage styled chairs which both needed some TLC.

Our local community is great at recycling furniture and home items for a small fee (I actually picked these up for free) but if you don’t have something similar, Gumtree or Ebay are great alternatives. I also like the Facebook marketplace, so do give that a go.

In this age of mass consumerism, it’s essential that we look to our neighbours, charity shops and second hand sales to reuse pieces for our home and cut down on buying new, all of the time. Every little bit we can do will help.

It only took a few hours to apply the paint. I’d opted for eggshell which gives a mid-sheen, tough finish and is perfect for wood. I gave them a quick rub down with sand paper and if you were being more thorough than me, you could prime them too.

Having chosen six colours I wanted to use from the palette, I decided on the best combinations to bring out the features of each chair. I was also looking at what would blend in best with the table (my Spiced Honey inspiration) and the colour scheme in the dining den.

Here’s the end result!

As you can see above, Chair 1 had a Gentle Moon makeover with a grey accent on the top bar from Concrete Grey and side leg bars, finished with a touch of Heart Wood to on the front leg bar.

I’d initially added this colour to the top bar but felt it looked a little too much like a chair for a child’s room rather than a dining chair. Adding the depth of Concrete Grey gave it a more grown up feel. The second back bar is Vintage smoke.

Chair 1 is actually a comfortable little chair and ideal for a good sitting position at the table!

Chair 2 is a complete contrast with the main makeover colour of Vintage Smoke.

It’s tied to the palette and the other chair, with the same Concrete Grey top bar, a Restful Slumber second back bar and then a paler pink on the lower ring in Floating Petal.

Again it works beautifully with the warmth of my Spiced Honey inspired table – and the light greys blend well with the white, more modern chairs.

I love this eclectic look at my dining table now. It’s given the room some more colour and made it feel cosier. I may even source a few more different style chairs and replace the modern Habitat ones too.