Can You Paint Veneer With Chalk Paint?

I take it you must have a veneered surface that you are wanting to paint with chalk paint. This has obviously led to you wondering whether you can paint veneer with chalk paint? And that has led you to my humble website. Well worry no longer my intrepid DIY’er, I have tested this out for you and have all of the results below.

The Veneer

For this test, I will be painting this little sample. This is an Oak veneer on MDF, part of a large board that has been cut down. This is the kind of veneer commonly used in furniture building. So this is just a very thin layer of real oak glued onto MDF board.

Painting Veneer With Chalk Paint

The paint I will be using for this is Rustoleum chalk paint, and I will be applying it with just a round chalk brush.

The paint went onto the veneer really easily. it covered really well, easily hiding all of the veneer with just a single coat. Now the real test will be to let the paint dry and see if it does anything to the veneer.

Sometimes paints can inadvertently “lift” the veneer, therefore ruining your furniture.

So here is the piece fully painted, now we just have to wait for it to dry!

After Drying

So let’s have a look at how our oak veneer painted with chalk paint got on.

As you can see we have had absolutely zero problems here. The chalk paint has worked really well on this oak veneer.

There is no sign of any sort of lifting or peeling of the veneer away from the base material.

The paint has also covered really well, with just a single coat being enough to completely cover the light wood.

Scratch Test

So onto the next test for our veneer sample. The scratch test.

For the scratch test, I will use some rough-cut timber and run it harshly across the surface of the paint. This is the same method I use in all my scratch tests.

I feel that rough cut c16 timber is a good test medium as it is not too hard but not too soft. If I used something really hard like metal then not much would stand up to it and the test would be pointless.

On the other hand, if I used something too soft it would never scratch anything and again it would be pointless.

So with my explanation out of the way let’s see how the veneer painted with chalk paint got on in the scratch test.

As you can see this is a fantastic result. No scratches or peeling at all. Just a few marks to the chalky paint surface which will be able to be cleaned up.

This is a really vigorous test and is far beyond what any furniture would actually suffer in a real use case.

So what this proves is that the chalk paint has really adhered to the veneer. it is not going to peel or chip off easily.