The 18th-Century Project You’ll Want to Do All Year in 2026

Jessica Ly, founder of wallpaper brand Cypress Atelier, painted this over-5-year-old IKEA armoire with folk-inspired motifs. “I follow a lot of antique and vintage home decor type of pages and was inspired by a folk art painted marriage cupboard posted by @johncornallantiques,” Ly says. “I used it as a source of inspiration and adapted it to the shape of my armoire and changed a few motifs to make it more personal to me.” She sketched her designs in pencil. 

Ly then used acrylic paint and a wax seal over top. She plans to swap out the latch hook for something antique. (Gevalt says you often see brass hardware, usually imported from Britain, on 18th-century painted furniture.) The project total came to about $50. “I love the bold folk art look of it,” Ly says. “It makes it fun to use and brings me to a peaceful fantasy slash cottagecore kind of place.” 

Painter Gianne Garcia (@tidy.totes) painted this early 2000s pine dresser that was “as simple as it got and lacked true character,” she says. “I found myself playing around with paint and eventually just felt called to paint the dresser.”

Inspired by nature, Garcia worked on her dresser in the spring. “I used more muted colors — muted pinks, greens, more yellows — to add contrast,” she says. And although the folk art furniture trend today leans more muted (as do the pieces in museum collections, thanks to fading over time), Gevalt says folk art furniture — especially around the turn of the 19th century — would have been much more vibrant than the aged surfaces now suggest. It wouldn’t be unusual to see colors like brilliant yellow, Prussian blue, bright reds, and bold greens. “They were living in dark spaces, so they were using colors to brighten up the place,” Gevalt says.

But, similar to the folk pieces, Garcia says hers reminds her of a piece passed down in a family. “It just has so much more life,” she says. “It feels like it could be a special heirloom for a future child perhaps — mine or someone else’s.”

DIYer Natasha Lake (@homeofnatasha) went bolder with her colors to turn the once-dark mahogany sideboard she scored secondhand at an auction into the floral piece it is today. “It adds an impact in a space that is fully white,” she says. 

She used Frenchic’s Matcha Green for the body of the piece and Annie Sloan’s Louis Blue for the florals. “The flowers became easier as I went,” she says, and she handbrushed them with a small brush — a DIY first for her. “I thought if it didn’t go well, I would just paint back over it,” she says. And, in fact, several of her fellow DIYers shared this sentiment when it came to rescuing their old pieces. The stakes are remarkably low with folk art painting, so don’t let worry over getting the design right faze you.

DIYer Heather Craig of (@heatherscolourful) bought three “very plain and farmhouse style” wardrobes in a pinch to add storage to her bedroom, and then she painted them pink (Farrow & Ball’s Nancy’s Blushes No. 78). “As lovely as the pink wardrobes are, I couldn’t help but feel I wanted more,” Craig says. “Folk art came to mind instantly. I searched Pinterest and made a collection of motifs I admired and felt I could easily do by hand.”
And she used an acrylic paint set “created especially for folk art” called Countryside Cottage. “I have done folk art on picture frames before, but never [anything] as large as a wardrobe,” she says. “I have only just finished, and even then I am still wondering if I will add more.”