Painting Granite Countertops to Look Like Marble

One of my very, very brave design clients decided they were tired of their busy granite countertops. The granite was over 20 years old, and they were looking for a lighter brighter look. They weren’t interested in spending huge money to replace them all, so they decided they would try painting their granite. I know, that seems so crazy right? But why not? I mean, people paint laminate all of the time. They were doing the prep, base coat, and  end project epoxy sealer, and  brought me in for the part of painting the granite countertops to look like marble.

 

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Here is a video of the full transformation. If you’re interested in how the marble technique is painted, I have a video on that at the end of the post.

 

While their old marble wasn’t bad by any means, and of course were in great shape, the color was very early 2000’s. The client really liked the simpler, cleaner look of marble.

There are granite countertop kits you can buy, but since they wanted a custom colors, they decided to put everything together on their own. Painting old granite countertops It’s really a great idea, because as granite colors go out of style, there has to be some solution to upgrade them other than spending huge money to replace them. Especially if you buy a home  where the existing stone countertops are an awful color. I’ve seen some pretty ugly stone.

 They went through the steps of first sanding, priming and then painting with base color top coat of paint. It immediately brightened up and simplified the kitchen.

After the paint had cured for a few days, I popped over and painted the marble pattern. It took me about 3 hours to paint both countertops.

I used a multi-surface paint to paint the marble. You can see this video of the marble-painting technique below. I’ve created faux marble a few ways, including paint poured faux marble on this table top.

 

I’m really pleased with how it ended up. I’ll share the finished project once they have the epoxy completed and the kitchen is back together.

The painted faux marble on the granite countertops really change the kitchen! The only downside to the top is that they won’t be able to treat it like granite, but more like laminate such as not putting hot pans directly on the surface, etc. However, they got a custom look for a few hundred dollars, so it can’t even compare!