Easy DIY Home Decor Crafts: Update an Old Ceiling Fan With Spray Paint!

We finally got our kitchen, living room and some hallways painted several weeks ago. When the painter asked if he could remove some of our kitchen ceiling fan's blades, so he could paint more easily, I figured it was the PERFECT time to take it all down and finally spray paint the thing and give it a new, updated look! Rustoleum 2X white and metallic nickel spray paints to the rescue! It cost me two new cans of spray paint, but I have plenty left for other projects. I did this project over a few days because I wanted to make sure parts were dry before doing a different colour.

The blades were already down when I remembered to take a "before" pic. Yup, that 1985-1990 brassy gold just had to go.

update an old ceiling fan with spray paint, diy, painting, wall decor

I took everything apart and gave things a good wash.

The masking took some time, but I sat at a table and was careful about doing it properly so as not to have drips and messes everywhere. Yikes, but that gold is blinding!! ;)

Umm... those blades WERE white already. ... or so I thought! The blades at the top of the photo are freshly sprayed with white. They had obviously aged quite a lot in twenty-some years!

Spray paint can cause dripping sometimes. :( It was a challenge to get rid of the drips, but I took the time to gently sand, and then roughly sand, and then gently sand the drips away. I'd say they were about 80% gone when I added thinner coats and covered them up.
Once the white was very dry, maybe two days later, I removed all the taping and then masked the white so I could spray paint nickel onto the old brassy gold parts.

Here is a close-up. I had the 'arms' that hold the blades in a box and spray painted them on both sides. There were a couple of places that needed touching up once all the taping and masking was removed, but I easily did that by spraying a bit of either white or nickel onto a small artist's brush and applying. I also had to spray paint all the screws and the little chains!

The fan looks soooo much better now! It blends into the newly painted white ceiling, instead of standing out, and it matches the kitchen hardware and lighting over the table. It was relatively easy, very inexpensive and I'm so glad I took the time to do it! Try it out!