You all know that lately I’ve been performing some pretty daring experiments with fabric and paint, right? Well, I’m here to tell you that yes, you can paint your outdoor cushions instead of shelling out the big bucks for replacement cushions, and I’m going to walk you through how I took my outdoor conversation set from this:
I loved our wicker conversation set, but it was almost six years old, and despite trying to be diligent about keeping it covered and/or out of the elements, the cushions were getting pretty faded. You can see it in better days {here}, {here}, and {here}, in our three most recent houses (Why yes, we move quite often. I always have new decorating material). My first thought was to replace the cushions, but–hello–have you seen the prices for new cushions?! It would cost almost as much as replacing the entire set, wicker and all! So I started to think about painting them…
You’ll remember that I dipped my toe into the idea of painting fabric with my thrift store chair {here}:
And then I decided to try spray painting my front porch cushions (with plain old spray paint) here:
So, it really wasn’t much of a stretch to decide to try painting these cushions, right? After all, what did I have to lose?
Having painted my gray chair using just a paint brush, I knew I didn’t want to tackle the outdoor cushions the same way. For one, I was going to paint them white, so I knew it would probably take me at least three coats (that’s exactly what it did take, by the way). Second, there were A LOT of them–eleven, to be exact. Fortunately, I had just received my “care package” for May from the folks at HomeRight–their awesome new paint sprayer, the FinishMax Pro. You can read about how I used their FinishMax {here} to paint my pencil-post bed with chalk paint.
The FinishMax Pro has the same hand-held spray gun, but it uses an air turbine to give you an amazingly smooth finish. I’m going to show you a stock photo, since I don’t even have mine right now–I loaned it to a friend so she could paint her kitchen cabinets. She knocked that project out in a day, by the way–seriously!
I used the same fabric medium that I used on my gray chair–Martha Stewart. The point of the fabric medium is to keep the paint pliable enough that your cushions won’t crack when you sit on them later!
If you can’t find fabric medium locally (I bought mine at Michael’s) here’s the Amazon link:
For reference, I used two quarts of paint for all eleven cushions, and seven bottles of 6 oz. fabric medium.
I mixed paint, fabric medium, and water to a 1:1:1 ratio, and that was thin enough for the sprayer to handle easily. Unlike my gray chair project, I did not spray the cushions with water first. Since they’re outdoor cushions, they were water resistant, so the water didn’t soak into the fabric.
I sprayed one coat on with the FinishMax Pro, and then went back over it with a brush to catch any drips (there will be quite a few as you want to use lots of thin coats when you’re painting fabric so the end product isn’t stiff as a board). See them here:
I also used the brush to work the paint into the creases between the cushions and the cording.
When they dried, I flipped them over and repeated. I also lightly sanded the rough patches in between coats. I didn’t have to sand my gray chair, but some areas on the cushions required sanding. I noticed that these tended to be the seat cushions, where the fabric was a bit more worn (and probably more fuzzy as that tends to “grab” paint). This is what those areas looked like before sanding–and they felt like sandpaper!
Here’s how it looks up close after painting and sanding:
After three coats, the floral print was completely covered. They are definitely less comfortable to sit on than my gray chair, but I am satisfied given that I just saved about $600 on new cushions. They are comfortable enough, that’s for sure! They’re also pretty much waterproof–see how the water beads on them? And that was only after the first coat!
Here are a few more after shots. I was glad to have this project finished before the big reception I hosted at my house a few weeks ago (read more about that here).
Don’t you love the lime green and white striped pillows and seat cushions? Abbey at Online Fabric Store (OFS) sent me three yards of Premier Prints Outdoor Vertical Greenage Fabric and I used it to cover the seat cushions on our vintage wrought iron dining set and sew envelope-flap slipcovers for some of my outdoor pillows. You can read more about the dining set {here}. I love how crisp and summery the green looks with my new white cushions!
I feel like I should mention the clean up with the FinishMax Pro. It is a breeze! I had actually never used a sprayer until about six months ago, and I was worried that there would be so many working parts to clean that it would eat up all the time I saved spraying vs. using a brush. Not so at all! It takes maybe five minutes, and it’s easy enough that you don’t have to look at the directions after you’ve done it once.
If you have more questions about painting fabric, then please read the tutorial on how I painted my gray chair {here} and the questions/answers post on painting upholstery fabric {here}. You’ll probably find that most of your questions are answered in those two posts.
Thanks for stopping by~
