DIY: Ombré Coffee Table

Annie Sloan, author and creator of Chalk Paint™, shares how to make the Ombré Coffee Table from her new book, Annie Sloan Paints Everything.

Ombré means “shaded” in French, and the gradual blending of colors on pieces of furniture seems to be a crossover idea from the world of fashion, where hair or clothes are dipped into a dye to change their color. The colors should merge seamlessly, so choose colors that work well together when they are mixed. I chose two colors near each other on the color wheel to be sure they would look good when blended. Many people opt for a color with white, so that the color made in between is a pastel. Some color combinations are less successful, however. Choosing, say, blue and yellow means you’d have a band of green in between, which would be distracting.

This little table is fairly featureless, but I thought I would draw attention to the legs, which are sweetly pointy. Although the technique looks easy, it was quite difficult to achieve on this particular table because the legs are angled. Rounded legs would have been easier to paint.