apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Unless the pic is doing something funky on my scree, I'd totally say these chairs, as is, would work in a cool blue and white scheme.

Maybe, even if just temporarily til you can afford a recover, you can introduce a tiny bit of this green into the rest of the room.

I actually used a spray paint that is made for vinyl to change some orange banquette seats to black. It worked really well. I assume they still sell that stuff, you might have to call around though.

I think the green would go well with a blue and white color scheme, saving it from being too much. Think celadon which can be either green or blue.

there was an episode of "flip this house" on A&E where they painted all the vinyl seats of a restaurant they were renovating. it seemed to work ok.

It's usually not to difficult to recover a chair like this yourself. If you can find a good discount upholstery place you can get nice fabric for $5-$10 a yd and it wouldn't take much more then that to recover these. I recently did a chair in an orange microsuede for about $2.50. It took about 30 minutes and a staple gun. Wish I had pics to post.

It's called "vinyl dye" interestingly enough. Couple different brands around. Check auto stores. Also, I've seen Ace Hardware carrying Krylon Fusion paint, which is pretty much the same stuff, and comes in a wider variety of color.

Either paint is great for plastic because instead of coating it, it softens the plastic and dyes it. Then when it dries, the plastic gets hard again. As a plus, it doesn't wear off like paint does, because the plastic is actually dyed instead of covered.

Ah, found a link to colors for the dye.

Plastikote Colors

would a shoe spray work? I seem to remember someone using that for a theater project, but I can't remember whether it worked well.

Oh, I love those chairs in THAT green. Don't hurt the chairs! Give them to me! I love them as they are!

I'm only partially kidding. Maybe I can find you some cool blue chairs and we could trade?

I thought at first that these were the kind of seats that pop right off and you just staple-gun fabric to the seat baord then pop it right back on, but these seem to be a tad more complicated than that.

Maybe you could knife-off the top part and recover just that?

That way you'd leave the groovy nail-head part and get what you want for the most visible seat surface.

S

Hi, i think that Vinyl Dye would do the trick quite nicely. I have used it to change my beige computer bezel black, as well as a few other small plastic items, including a synthetic carpet. It is very easy to work with, it doesnt sag like paint so if you are messy like me, its forgiving.

Its pretty hard to overapply, and dries very quickly. It saturates into the vinyl, so shouldnt scratch or crack off. I havent tried the Krylon plastic paints, but i think the vinyl dye might produce more durable results. I live in Hawaii, i've found the best selection of colors at automotive stores (checker)

Here's some quick info on it for painting plastics..

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/modding/46

Good luck!

Cracker, I love it when you talk "seat surface."

Brian,
Congratulations and those very beautiful chairs! I think an auto shop carries vinyl spray paint. The problem with painting vinyl is that it moves and the paint can crack.

These chairs are very beautiful as is. I would leave them. That green works very well with cool blue and white. I would love to see the rest of your place. Maybe you'll enter the colors contest?