Painting Fabric using Dupli-Color Fabric Paint

[Fastlane]

The Top of the Rear Seat and door panel cloth is sun faded. The material is in good shape, so I thought of trying out some Dupli-Color Vinyl and Fabric Paint. Has anyone used this product with good results?
Since this appears to be paint, how do you keep the cloth from getting hard? Or losing the cloth feel?

[dagenham]

You dont. It still feels weird. What color interior do you have? Black will match "ok", but I know personally that the tan looks completly wrong. I am in the same situation as you with faded seat backs. I have a few ideas but havent tried any of them yet.

[STL79Coupe]

I tried that stuff on a headliner and it didn't work at all. I'm not sure if the foam kept soaking it up or what the problem was. I would search for a real fabric dye if that's even available for the color you need.

[wraithracing]

Any of the fabric paints will cause the material to feel stiff and scratchy after coloring.

You can brush the material while spraying and after to try and lessen the effects, but it will not remove all of it.

An actual dye that you soak the materials in will do a better job of not changing the texture or feel of the material. As stated black and some greys do pretty well. Most of the other colors don't usually work as well.

Headliners almost never work due to the material. The fabric is extremely thin and the paint/dye will soak thru to the foam and the foam will try and soak up the color. Bottom line is replacing the headliner is generally the best solution.

[STL79Coupe]

Any of the fabric paints will cause the material to feel stiff and scratchy after coloring.

You can brush the material while spraying and after to try and lessen the effects, but it will not remove all of it.

An actual dye that you soak the materials in will do a better job of not changing the texture or feel of the material. As stated black and some greys do pretty well. Most of the other colors don't usually work as well.

Headliners almost never work due to the material. The fabric is extremely thin and the paint/dye will soak thru to the foam and the foam will try and soak up the color. Bottom line is replacing the headliner is generally the best solution.

Agreed and the headliner isn't very hard to do. The worst part is getting the old foam off the board.

[dagenham]

I have s bottle of RIT brand fabric dye to try. The directions tell you to soak the material in hot water add the dye and then wash the material. A little hard to do if the material is still on the seat frame. I put some in a spray bottle and just sprayed it on a test area and it does the same thing. It gets hard feeling.
I was thinking about putting some of the dye in some hot water and then spraying that way to see if I get better results.

[gr79]

The spray works fine on vinyl. Depending on prep, is durable or flakes off.
Had some white paint spots on my black aftermarket drivers seat.
The spray has not worn off. Been, gosh, 10 years?
Not that good on plastic door panels. SEM brand is better.

Some say it works fine.
Some people say they wet the fabric first.
Minimizes over saturation?
Then brush after, or it eventually loosens up.
Others say replace fabric.
It colors only the backing and not the fibers.
Car cloth is different than clothing. Fire retardants, stain repellents.
Paint on fabric (like on clothing when painting house) always hardens.
Clogs up the air space between the fabric threads.
Taking covers off would allow blowing air thru fabric with hair dryer.
Dye would thinner.
Am under the impression color is added to fabric or thread in a vat or something?
How Its Made? Did see patterns sprayed when making house carpeting.
Need just enough to evenly dye only the threads.
Easier said than done.
Sure aint gonna do pace car recaros or houndstooth.

[Fastlane]

Thanks for all of the tips! I didn't have any issue with the Headliner, I found this stuff on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 checked a couple of YouTube Videos on installing a headliner and it turned out very nice, I would also recommend 3m https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1. For the rear window Tray, I used some thin Particleboard, cut speaker holes, cut to the same shape as the old Tray and covered with some of the extra headliner material. This turned out very nice, looks factory.
As for the rear seats, I am going to have the front seats recovered and have the back seat recovered at the same time.

[erratic50]

I sprayed some 89 GT Recaro buckets that were grey from the factory a black with dark red inserts to match the dark red interior in my 86 way back in 1996. Generally speaking the results met my expectations. I've easily driven 275K miles sitting on those Recaros, no rips, no holes, the fabric has wore like iron. Absolutely unreal honestly! It was stiff and scratchy at first but not bad after a little bit.

Leather dye will also work, but it's supposed to be top coated with laquer to keep it from rubbing off.

The problem with any of these is fabric is dyed before the seats are made. Foam is stitched to the back of the material as the first step and this makes it near impossible to work with.

i would leave it alone or buy new pre made covers from TMI. Great opportunity to change colors if you want.

[dagenham]

Good point about SEM products. Then you can have it made by the color code of your interior.

[Davedacarpainter]

If it helps, i've been doing a little studying on the subject because i can't afford to blow the money on new seat covers at this moment.

The cloth in our seats are made using a nylon type thread, basically a thin plastic thread. It is not porous like a natural thread (cotton, wool, etc....).

Dyes and paints are different in how the molecules adhere to the host threads. Dyes use a much smaller molecule that can infuse a porous thread where a paint needs a binder (glue, kind of) to attach the pigment to the thread making it larger and less able to soak into an individual thread.

Dyes work well in cloth such as cotton shirts because of the porosity of the threads, this allows the dye to absorb into the individual thread. Not so much our seats.

Back to our seats and what they are made of. Plastic threads are the color they are based on the pigments added to the base plastic while the plastic is in the molten state prior to being extruded into a colored thread. In other words, you aren't going to change the base color.

All we can do is coat the thread in the color we desire. It doesn't matter if the thread used to be a certain color and changed due to UV exposure, or bright original color. We coat the thread in a color it's not or not anymore.

This is why i decided to try painting mine. I did a small test of using a dye on my bottom rear seat cover and ran it through my little torture test of washing it in my washing machine. I did this same thing with paint. I used an adhesion promoter on the fabric prior to application of the dye and paint. For me, the paint offered better adhesion.

I repainted the entire seat. It was light blue prior to this. After i let the fabric set for three days, i recovered my seat foam and took a common scrub brush to the cloth portion, i scrubbed for maybe five minutes over the entire surface. I then vacuumed the cloth with my dyson vacuum cleaner to remove the larger dust and then wiped the seat with a cloth and warm water. While the seat is not perfectly as soft as before the paint application, i don't believe anyone would be able to feel that it was painted, it is soft. This is how it turned out.

I can't tell you about long term durability. I did sit on the seat for the evening just to see if it would rub off on my big old butt. It didn't.

I just need to have mine last for about a year till i can spend the money on new covers. We'll see, i guess.

[Fastlane]

Looks like it turned out pretty nice, Dave. I may try what I have on some door panels.