This Paint Idea Lived Rent-Free in My Mind for Years, so I Finally Tried (and Love!) It

Interior designer Callie Windle understands the power of paint when it comes to revamping furniture. While shopping at a local antiques warehouse in Dallas, she came across a set of “cute but kind of boring” nightstands that were just begging for an upgrade. “I knew the nightstands had great bones but desperately needed a facelift,” she says. Instead of simply coating them in another color and calling it a day, though, she decided to do something a little more out of the box.

Inspired by the furniture she saw when staying at Hotel Peter & Paul in New Orleans, Windle opted to revamp the nightstands using a trompe-l’oeil effect that mimics the wardrobes and dressers in the hotel’s guest rooms. The pieces are actually plain-front but were painted with shades darker and lighter than their bases to create shadows and highlights that make them seem as though they feature fancy architectural moldings. “This paint idea has been living rent-free in my mind for years,” she says. “It was so fun to finally incorporate it into my own home.” 

To get started on this DIY, Windle first removed the hardware from each nightstand and sanded down both pieces to help her new paint adhere. She chose Farrow & Ball’s Parma Gray No. 27 as her base, which is a color that, despite what its name suggests, reads as a beautiful baby blue. From there, she mocked up how she wanted her design to look, following the notches and grooves her piece already had for guidance.

Then, she painted over these lines with hues slightly darker and lighter than her base to add contrast, which creates the dimension of the faux trim. In her TikTok video, Windle says that the result is meant to look a bit “cartoony,” so you don’t have to be precise with your lines or shading. Just use the pieces from Hotel Peter & Paul as a visual reference and have fun with it, as she did. 

This technique would look stunning on a wide range of pieces. You can follow the steps Windle outlines here and apply them to a desk, dresser, console table, and so on. Either way, it’s an excellent, affordable project to take on, given that you can purchase your furniture secondhand like Windle did and then just need to pick up fairly small amounts of paint in three different shades of essentially the same color. 

“One of my favorite things about interior design is how limitless the possibilities are — you only need imagination and openness to see the potential,” Windle says, and this project is the perfect example of this philosophy. Inspiration is truly around every corner, so the next time you travel to a new hotel (or a museum or restaurant), take note of the furniture on display and see what jumps out at you. Maybe you can even re-create it on the cheap, as Windle did here.