So you’ve found the perfect piece of furniture that needs a little love and you have a vision for giving it a makeover. The painting part is your jam! You can’t wait to start creating the beautiful new finish that is in your mind. But you know there is some work to do first. A little prepping of your piece. Which requires sanding. Sanding freaks you out. You have so many questions when it comes to sanding that you’re paralyzed and you don’t know where to begin. Hopefully my tips for sanding before painting furniture will be helpful to you!

I thought a Q&A format might work well for these tips. So let’s dive in!

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When do you need to sand?

Sanding is required before ANY paint is applied to ANY piece. Yes, that includes chalk type paint. But don’t worry, it’s probably not as big a deal as you think. Keep reading.

Do I need to sand the existing finish completely off?

Not necessarily. The only time you would need to do this is if you plan to stain the wood a different color. But even then there are products such as General Finishes Gel Stain that can be applied over an existing finish. However, you’ll ALWAYS want to at least give the existing finish a light sanding first.

What is a light sanding/scuff sanding/grip sanding?

Anytime you hear someone refer to giving something a light sanding or scuff sanding, or sanding to give something a grip, what that means is taking a high grit sandpaper and lightly going over the surface. You’re not necessarily removing any color from the piece (though it’s not harmful if some happens to come off). The goal is to just rough up the surface enough to take away the super slick, smooth finish and allow your paint to have something to grab onto when you begin to apply it.

What grit should I use for sanding? What is grit anyway?

Grit refers to the coarseness of the sand paper. You will see sand paper with grit ranging from 60 to 400 and beyond. The lower the number, the more coarse the grit. So for a light sanding like we mentioned above, you want something like a 220 grit sand paper to just gently scuff the surface enough to give your paint something to grip.

You’ll also want to be sure you give a light sanding between coats of paint and topcoat and 220 grit is great for that as well.

If you want to remove the existing finish for a stain or paint wash you would want to start with something like a 60 or 80 grit sand paper. Once you remove the existing finish with the coarse grit, you want to go over the surface again with something like a 120 or 150 grit, and finally with a 220 grit to help smooth out the surface.

What other things should I know about the proper way to sand?

You want to always be sure you sand in the direction of the grain, never across it. This can get tricky with multi-directional grains. I found this out the hard way and you can read all about that HERE.

There are so many options for sand paper and sanding tools out there. What are your favorites and recommendations?

For sand paper, I like this 3M sand paper. I keep this stocked up in my shop in almost every grit for the various jobs I do. If you’re looking to do just a one-off project and don’t need to keep several grits handy, I suggest the 220 grit. It will be sufficient for most jobs.

I also like to keep these sanding blocks on hand. They’re only good for a handful of sandings on their own, but I like to take the 3M sand paper and wrap it around the sanding block to give a nice flat surface for my sand paper as opposed to just holding the sand paper alone in my hand and applying pressure with my fingers. The sanding block helps apply even pressure across the entire surface.

These 150 grit sanding sponges are great if you do a lot of painting. They come in bulk from Amazon and they are little bit softer than just sand paper. I like to use these in between coats of paint and topcoat. Even though they are 150 grit, they are fine enough to accomplish the same light sanding as 220 grit sand paper.

Sanding pads are also great to use between coats of topcoat for a softer sanding. The grit is the same, but the pads and sponges are a little less harsh.

If you’re sanding often and/or need to remove an existing finish, I really like this orbital sander by Makita. It makes quick work of the job. This requires sanding discs which are sold separately in the same grit options as regular sand paper.

Here are the sanding discs you would need to accompany the orbital sander.

I hope this is helpful to you. If you have other questions about sanding feel free to drop them in the comments below! Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog! 🙂

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Tips for sanding before painting furniture

Tips For Sanding Before Painting Furniture