Protect Your Outdoor Furniture Paint and Designs
Our expert exterior painters noticed that the maintenance of your furniture is often one of the more frustrating up keeps for a house. It’s only worse if you are also dealing with outdoor furniture even. Most people will complain about needing to move their couch to get all the dust out, but when it comes down to it, there are worse problems when it comes to the upkeep of your furniture. The most glaring is keeping your outdoor furniture safe from rust, rot, dirt, and the weather. But what if you are trying to protect the look of your furniture and not just keeping it from being damaged. After all, if you have things like painted designs on your furniture then you can’t use many of the options most people would resort to when it comes to furniture protection.
So here are a few methods from SPPI exterior painters that you can resort to, if you are trying to preserve your furniture design without also damaging it.
Furniture Covers
These are actually one of the most obvious methods for protecting your furniture. Indoor and outdoor furniture covers can be found in all sorts of varieties. The key however is to be aware of what kind of covers are best for furniture. Using plastic covering is one of the worst types, as it offers no breathability to your furniture (especially if it has upholstery) and at the same time, just throwing a sheet over your furniture will still force it to bear through the weather conditions such as the sun indoors and pretty much anything outside.
When it comes down to the right cover to be using, you have to consider what conditions you will be protecting against and what you want to protect on your furniture. If you want to be holding against strong winds and rains with a cover, then get straps on it so it can hold in place, if you want it to bear through snow, then make it a little less breathable with something thicker like a leather. And no, a bed sheet does not function well, and neither do slip covers all that much. If you want to cover, go for a full cover and make it worth it, otherwise just drop it completely, as a bad cover like that can result in heavy mold or other nasty things.
Chemical Warfare
These days the use of chemicals is often condemned due to trying to protect the environment, but not all chemicals are toxic to the air or emit terrible things. You can get non-aerosol products that have all the same effects without exposing a plume of particles in the air. The key is just making sure to get the right kind of chemicals you want to run with, and even then they don’t guarantee your furniture against harsh conditions like snow or intense heat. Also some woods that furniture might be made of already come in a form of treatment, like if you get anything with Teak wood, you’ll discover that there isn’t really anything you could paint onto the wood that would improve the longevity of it, that is unless you are actually painting the wood with a design then you are probably decreasing the longevity.
But if you did want to paint even that wood, then you would still want to run with something to protect your designs and there really isn’t anything better than chemicals for that area, even something as strange as clear nail polish can actually be quite effective at protection and not damaging to the environment.
Cleaning Things
Most people don’t quite realize how important the process of just cleaning up their furniture actually makes. It is not just the matter of keeping those things looking nice; it is a matter of the upkeep in terms of the damage your furniture will take by not being cleaned. Leave some leaves on the couch outside? Well you could end up with some rot, fungus and bugs taking over that couch pretty quickly. If you don’t really mind the damage then you won’t have to worry, but how many people want to sit on furniture that has rotted or has gotten dirtied up to where you barely even want to touch your body to it?
You don’t even have to resort to major cleaning; just something like sweeping leaves off and occasionally washing the pillows and cushions can make a huge difference.
Anyone of these, or even all of them at once can drastically improve the surviving level of your furniture, whether inside or out, and it will also make them look good, so just keep up with it. It’s not much time or money for something that will make a significant change.
About the Author: Lisa Henfield is an exterior designer who spent a few years designing outdoor furniture covers for hotels in Las Vegas. She mostly writes about her design experiences, providing tips on outdoor accessories and furniture for both businesses and the average person. When she isn’t practicing her sewing or writing about the right colors for the outdoor seasons she usually works on her paintings.
