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painting garden furniture
Guide to Painting Timber Garden Furniture with Thorndown
Painting your garden furniture will protect it against the weather and rain damage, helping it to last a lifetime, and can transform these garden items into beautiful statement pieces as part of your garden design.
We’ve put together a simple guide to help you paint and maintain your timber garden furniture along with some examples of what you can create with our Wood Paint.Â
EQUIPMENT
1. Bucket with soapy water and a stiff brush to clean off dirt and algae from old furniture. For stubborn patches of algae use a mild bleach solution. A power washer is a great way to blast off dirt and algae but will saturate the wood so you’d need to factor in 1-2 days drying depending on how hot and strong the sun is. On a really hot dry day it can just be a few hours before it’s dry enough
2. Sandpaper and tools for fixing – a screwdriver and hammer is usually all you need
3. Paint and painting equipment including a paint stirrer. You can use our Coverage Calculator to work out how much paint you need and try samples in different paint colours to make sure you love your colour choice.
You can use a brush, roller or sprayer to apply Thorndown Wood Paint.Â
TOP TIPSÂ
Brushes – use a good quality synthetic brush that’s about the same width as the timber the furniture is made from. This makes painting a lot quicker and neater rather than using a small brush and having to constantly reload paint and only cover small areas at a time, which can also end up looking patchy. Have a small brush for fiddly areas.Â
The advantage of using a brush is that you can control the paint easily and make sure you get it into all of the gaps and joints.Â
Rollers – use a medium nap roller sleeve on planed/smooth panels.Â
Sprayers – use a HVLP (high volume low pressure) sprayer. A spray gun is a great way to cover large areas quickly but you can get a lot of paint wastage especially if there is a wind blowing the paint spray. It can also cause a lot of mess so cover flooring and surrounding area and if the wind is too strong, don’t spray! You can get some really good electric spray guns quite cheaply.
4. You may need a step ladder if you’re painting a tall arbour seat.
PICK YOUR COLOUR
Select your colour or colours thinking about a colour palette that will fit with your garden design, planting, and bring a smile to your face. You can use sample pots to make sure you’re getting exactly the colour you want in situ as different timber surfaces and lighting can affect the shade you see. Small hand painted blocks of wood are also available as a cheaper option to paint sample tins.
Thorndown use exterior grade colour pigments that perform at the highest levels in lightfast and weather resistance tests, meaning that the colour you chose is the colour you’ll see for years and years. Thorndown satin Wood Paint is available in a beautiful and diverse colour palette of 72 colours and transparent wood stain tones, UV Clear to retain the natural colour of the timber, 1800 RAL Classic and Design colours, 2050 NCS colours and 434 British Standard colours BS318C BS4800 BS5252F.
PREPARATION
- Put down a dust sheet to protect surfaces underneath the furniture from getting splattered with paint
- Sand off any rough patches or loose old coatings that will show or affect the finish. If you paint directly onto old flaky loose paint then the old paint will in time just flake and fall off taking the new paint coating with it.
- Make repairs to any loose joints or screws that may need tightening.
- Wooden furniture may need preserving with a Wood Preserver. Hardwood has natural resistance but untreated softwood will be vulnerable to rot and decay so this should be treated with a wood preserver first. If your furniture is made with new pressure treated softwood remove any surface residue from the pressure-treatment process by lightly sanding.Â
- Make sure the surface is clean. Wash off any dirt with soapy water or use a pressure-washer to blast off persistent dirt or algae. Washing with a light bleach/water solution will help to kill off algae.
- Before painting make sure the timber is dry otherwise coatings won’t fix properly to the timber affecting performance and longevity. Moisture content needs to be <20% which can be measured using a protimeter, available at DIY stores and online.
PRIMER
 7. Apply a knotting agent or stain-blocking primer to prevent possible staining of the paint coating from tannins and resin bleeds – or don’t worry about it and let nature take its course. Thorndown Stain Blocking Primer is water-based and comes in 4 colours from Clear to White, Grey and Black to suit your top coat paint colour.
8. Treat metal surfaces or use paint with flash rust inhibitor like Thorndown Wood Paint to stop rust from forming on non-galvanised metal or metal screws/nails other than stainless steel. If rust already exists you will need to remove it or it will come through the paint coating.
PAINTING
 9. Check the weather to make sure rain isn’t forecast for at least 24 hours to allow plenty of time for the paint to dry and fix/bond.
10. Get your Thorndown Wood Paint, a paint stirrer, good quality synthetic brush, roller or sprayer.Â
11. Apply one coat and leave to dry for 1-2 hours depending on weather. If hot and dry the paint coating will dry a lot quicker, ready for a second coat to be applied.
12. Don’t forget the feet and the underside of furniture! Cut ends at the feet soak in liquid so they need a good 3 – 4 coats to properly seal them. You can start with furniture upside down, paint the feet then give the underside a good coat making sure to watch out for drips going through slatted surfaces and dealing with them before they dry. A good coat on the underside of furniture will provide decent all round protection but if you do 2 coats, then it will be fully sealed and you won’t have to touch it again for up to 10 years when a maintenance coat should be applied.
13. Paint on a second coat and leave to dry. Thorndown Wood Paint will be touch dry within an hour or two but the curing/fixing process takes longer which is why we advise making sure rain isn’t forecast and not to sit on furniture for 12-24 hours.
14. Some lighter colours or semi-opaques can look better with a third coat as it will increase the opacity, depth and richness of the colour. The majority of Thorndown colours only need 2 coats, giving you great colour coverage and full exterior protection.
15. Horizontal surfaces on garden furniture take a real beating from the sun, rain, snow, ice and bottoms, wearing faster than vertical surfaces, so give extra attention here and an extra coat of paint for good measure. An extra coat will give it additional strength and it will be even longer before a maintenance coat is required.
16. For a flat matt finish you could try using Thorndown Wall Paint instead! Explore the Advice – Wall Paint page on the website for details.
TIPS
Don’t overload your paint brush or roller with paint or you’ll get drips. Thorndown Wood Paint is designed to hold well in the brush bristles and if you do get any drips whilst painting, just look out for them and smooth them out before they dry.Â
Always paint with the grain along the entire length of timber slats/sections, always in nice long even strokes painting up to still wet paint so you won’t get patches, and you won’t get lost as to what you’ve painted and what you haven’t when it comes to a second coat.
CLEANING PAINT EQUIPMENT
With water-based paint you can clean still paint wet brushes with water. For stubborn paint on bristles you can use a spot of detergent too. Oil-based paints require chemicals such as white spirit to clean paint equipment.
When cleaning sprayers it’s even more important to thoroughly clean all pipes, nozzles and components whilst the paint inside is still wet, because if the paint is left to dry it can be impossible to clean out.
STORAGE
Seal your paint tin lid firmly and store paint somewhere that it won’t freeze or be exposed to extreme heat. If you clean paint off the rim of the lid and the tin it will seal better and you won’t get paint sticking and sealing it shut.Â
The paint will then last a couple of years, or more, for maintenance and touch-ups, or another project.
DESIGN IDEAS FOR YOUR GARDEN FURNITURE
Below are some images of garden furniture painted in Thorndown Wood Paint to give you some ideas and colourful inspiration.
Above photos are painted in Thorndown Wood Paint colours from left to right:
- Whortleberry on Hutton Dean Companion Set
- Tree Lichen on Forest Garden Products Harvington Bench
- Greylake on Hutton Cotswold Bench
- Hazel on customer seating
- Peregrine Blue and Bath Cream on Hutton Herefordshire Arbour
- Parlyte Green and Bath Cream on Hutton Triangular Corner Arbour
- Parlyte Green and Reed Green on Love Your Garden pergola seat
- Zinc Grey on customer bench
- Cavepool Grey on Spring into Summer pergola seating
- Bullrush Green on customer seat
- Cavepool Grey and Gromwell Green on Zest4Leisure bench
- RAL 7037 Dusty Grey on Forest Firenze Corner Arbour
- Moorland Green on Forest Half Arbour
- Lead Grey and Rock Rose on Zest4Leisure Miami Swing Seat
- Bullrush Green on Robert Dyas bench
You can download our simple pdf guide to painting garden furniture here Thorndown  Painting Garden Furniture Advice
For inspiration on painting garden furniture and garden design tricks, visit our Garden Furniture section in Projects.