How To Paint Velvet Upholstery - The Easy Way
2 Materials
Back in march I picked up these vintage pink velvet chairs on craigslist. I had high hopes for them as they had such good bones. Cane chairs are my ultimate favourite style of vintage chairs and a lot of high end designers get them reupholstered and painted. Well, I didn’t have that kind of budget because reupholstery can cost upwards of 500 a chair, or more. So I set out to google different methods of painting upholstery.
I found a lot of tutorials on painting different types of cotton, and other similar materials but couldn’t find a lot on velvet. One tutorial said to paint the chair with water first or spray the material before beginning and below I’ll explain on why that step isn’t really important.
I found a lot of tutorials on painting different types of cotton, and other similar materials but couldn’t find a lot on velvet. One tutorial said to paint the chair with water first or spray the material before beginning and below I’ll explain on why that step isn’t really important.
I basically started off with painting the chair seat with water. I read somewhere that this is beneficial and I highly discourage it. Not only is my seat taking WAY longer than the back of the chair to dry, but it will need additional coats as the paint sunk in too far. This might be a great method on a cotton chair as you are basically dying the chair fabric, but for velvet I found that just simply painting straight away worked better.
This 887 ML Can cost me $22.00 and the color, consistency and coverage is actually pretty nice. I’ve used quite a few other chalk paints before and it fits the bill nicely. Plus the color is so dreamy.
Here’s a shot mid first coat, as you can tell the coverage is amazing.
After throwing one more coat of paint on the chairs, here’s how they turned out.
Would I ever paint upholstery again? Yes, but not for a good while. I only had enough time today to paint one of my chairs and it is a lot more work than painting wood.
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I added the fabric medium to paint and the chair turned out great. It may have been a tad "stiff" at first, but with use it has softened right up.
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What fabric medium? Are we talking about floetrol?
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I have a faded reddish burgandy chair will it take to a lighter color?
3 questions: 1st, did you sand the wood before painting? 2nd, did you use the same paint for both the fabric and the wood? 3rd, What was the fabric medium used for and how was it applied? Thank you for this idea, I have a chair almost identical to the one you show here. It needs an updated look.