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It gave us new countertops in one hour.

We're always on the lookout for easy hacks that turn our spaces from standard builder-grade to custom dream homes—especially when they're low cost. So, when this spray paint—which come out looking like Silly String but leaves a pattern line natural marble veining—began making waves on TikTok for turning old kitchens into Insta worthy backdrops, it was time to put the viral hack to the test. Here are three ways we used it:

Countertops are the most popular transformation with the under-$10 spray paint, but you'll need a few more tools to get the perfect finish. First, you'll need to clean and sand your counters to give the paint something to grip too. Keeping your backsplash? Tape off a border and cover any delicate tiles with plastic.

If your counters aren't your dream color (or feature artificial effects), you'll also need to lay down a good base. Plenty of videos feature a black base to make covering darker laminates easy, but a white primer (ceiling paint works great too!) can give you that influencer kitchen just as easily. Just make sure to sand between layers for heavier coverage.

Once the base coat is dry, spray the marble paint to mimic natural veining. Unlike our test of hand-painted marble veining, a spray can gives far less control and gets out of hand quickly. Touch-up heavy splatter and give depth to your counters by painting your base color on top of your spray with a light hand. This should blend the spray and base together and make the counters look more like natural stone. Wait for the paint to dry at least 2 hours.

For high-traffic or food-safe surfaces, lightly sand the surface and add a coat of poly or resin to give a shiny, stonelike finish.

Adding marble to plain planters was the easiest DIY we've ever taken on. Marble spray paint has a minute dry time on clean, dry surfaces, so the longest part of this test was lugging these planters outside to spray! For an affordable matching set, pick out cheap planters in a meutral base color like white or black and spray them with a few quick lines of marble spray paint. We used the same can from our countertop test and had plenty to update more than one set of planters.

After taking the marble spray paint from the kitchen to our indoor greenhouse, the marble spray still had plenty of mileage. We ended our test with plastic, which we anticipated posing the biggest challenge: Even the highest grip paint suffers from peeling when applied to a thin, glossy plastic.

To prevent chipping, you'll want to apply at least two coats of priming base. Don't sand between coats or you'll risk peeling the paint. Once the base is dry, take the trays outside to apply the same veining as on the countertops.

Unlike the planters, the trays needed more time to dry and the slippery material gave the effect time to shift from its original placement. Touch-up patchy spots or over-application with another layer of base paint. Wait at least 6 hours to dry. If your marble effect still seems loose, seal with a poly or resin topcoat.

Our take: One can of this spray paint goes a long way and, while less precise than hand-painting, the nozzle gives enough control to create natural veining without needing an artistic eye. On a well primed surface like a countertop, the marble effect dries and layers beautifully giving a near picture perfect finish with a coat of glossy sealant. Easy materials like wood and ceramic handle the spray paint just as well and can be customized in seconds with minimal dry time, but if you're hoping to upgrade cheap plastic decor, you're better off sticking to, say, a fabric hack than paint.

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