Leopard Skin Is a Terrible Colour Scheme for a Kitchen

Let’s talk about tanning bleed.

You might think that’s what happens when you stay out in the sun too long. It’s not. At least, I don’t think so. I’m from Wales. I don’t know very much about the sun. (Mostly, we get our warmth from world-class harmony singing and a fine national rugby team.)

To a kitchen painter, tanning bleed means the brown stains that leak through a bad paint job. It can look a real shocker—as if the painter decided to go with a leopard skin colour scheme. That’s a bad look for a kitchen. Actually, leopard skin is a bad look for anything, other than a leopard, but especially for a kitchen.

As a professional, it makes me want to cry when I see it. It also makes me angry. I was asked to repaint a kitchen in Dublin not so long ago that was covered in tanning bleed polka dots.

And that wasn’t the only problem with it.

The client had been told the kitchen had originally been painted by hand. I could tell from a single glance it hadn’t. The wood had a grain to it and the paint hadn’t coated the uneven surface properly. If you hand paint a kitchen, the paint will get into every single dimple and line in grain of the wood, leaving nothing bare, however small.

We have a trade term for this standard of work. I can’t repeat it here, because this is a family blog. But if I were to translate it into language the Irish Film Classification Office would give a General Certificate to, I’d say it was ‘a very big number 2 job’. Elephant-sized number 2. Actually, several elephants got together… Look, it was a disaster, let’s keep it at that.

Tanning bleed is easily avoided. It’s caused by the resin you find in some woods. It leaches out of the wood, discolouring the paint. To prevent it from happening, you need to apply the correct primer. That will form an impenetrable layer and protect the outer layer of paint from the resin.

Although correcting shoddy work is annoying, it is also one of the most satisfying parts of being a kitchen painter. The look in the client’s eyes when they see their freshly painted kitchen is priceless. I sometimes almost have to convince them it’s the same kitchen—that’s how big the difference can be.

What I can’t get over, though, is that there are people out there who will tell the client they have bought a hand-painted kitchen when in reality they haven’t. People like that should be staked out in the burning sun and made to feel a severe case of tanning bleed first hand.

Here are some before and after pictures: