Make Your Home Christmas-Ready with These Leftover Paint Ideas

If you’re thrifty and resourceful, you probably hate throwing away stuff that hasn’t reached its end-of-life yet. Like that can of paint, which is still quarter-full with that favorite colour you painted your walls with. We hoard these paint colours, waiting for the day we can use them to repaint something, but we seldom do. If this sounds like your story, Christmas is your perfect excuse to reopen those paint cans and make good use of leftover paint.

Make an Accent Wall

An accent wall, or a feature wall, is a wall whose paint colour differs from the rest of the room’s colour. If your leftover paint is of a brighter hue, you can paint one wall in your living room with it to create an accent wall. You could also use textures to make your accent wall stand out while using the same room colour. Bringing a pop of colour to the room is sure to make the Christmas festivities come alive!

Create a Mural

If you have tiny amounts of many different paint colours, you could consider getting a mural painted on one of your walls. This is a similar concept to that of an accent wall, except that you don’t have to paint the entire wall with one colour. This is especially helpful when you don’t have a large amount of one solid colour. This could even be a great pre-Christmas activity for you and your family to get those family-bonding juices flowing.

Colour Some Picture Frames

Buy wooden picture or photo frames of different sizes and colour them with the leftover paint colours that you have. Alternatively, if you have a non-white wall to hang the frames, paint the frames white and colour inside the frames with bright solid colours to give a colourful, festive look to your home.

Upcycle Your Furniture

Make your boring old furniture fresh and bold by giving them a fresh coat of paint. This works really well with wooden chairs, stools, and coffee tables, or kids’ room furniture. You can completely transform your study room to a more creative space simply by painting a few furniture pieces in bright colours.

Use a Stencil

You can create amazing patterns and textures on your wall with stencils. Buy a stencil of your choice either at a local store or online. You can also create your own stencil, like one with colourful hearts in this video or this ethnic-looking stencil with blooming flowers, both inspired from the Nerolac Colour Trails. We have several stencil and other wall decor ideas for you in the Nerolac Paints India video series on YouTube.

Fix Chipped Paint

Finally, use the leftover paint to fix or mask chipped portions of chair legs, door and window frames, or absolutely anywhere, as long as you have a colour that matches!