Outdoor Makeover| How To Replace Patio Furniture Slings

Dirty and torn fabric on your outdoor chairs?

Here's how to replace the chair slings on your patio furniture for a brand new look.


Ah...summer. It's the season I wait for all year long.

I'm a true summer girl and I try to hold on to every second of it.

I adore the warm air that hits me in the morning when I open the patio door, the smell of the salt air, the late sunsets and the sand between my toes.

I am outside as much as possible.

So it stands to reason that in the summer, I suddenly don't really care about the interior of my home that much. 

Instead, I begin decorating and fluffing so my view outside is as pretty as the one inside.

However, just like inside, nothing has really been done outside in the past decade or so.

Yes, yes, we did enclose our covered porch and my husband did stain the patio and then painted the concrete.

But other than that, the backyard has not changed in years. (Pssst- we just replaced the liner in the pool!)

And this year, I was bored silly with all of it. Especially the patio furniture.


 It was worn out and tired looking and some of the slings were tattered and torn.

New sets are expensive and the frame was in great shape, so my husband and I decided to DIY.

It all started with a few curbside chairs.

He'd found a pair of very dated, green aluminum sliders in the trash and brought them home.

Besides a little chipped paint and worn seat slings, they were in great structural shape and aluminum which is fabulous for outdoors.

A little spray paint could fix the metal, but what about those slings. Could we replace those? We had no idea, but we knew Google would...

So, we went online and googled "patio furniture replacement slings" and lo and behold, tons of companies came up. We chose the one, picked a fabric, ordered them....

...and left everything in the garage, untouched, for about three years.

I kid you not.

That brings us to this summer.

After more than a decade, our old aluminum patio set had started to chip and the slings were getting ragged, faded and had worn thin.


Aluminum sets do not rust and are perfect for our beach and pool lifestyle, but man, are they pricey.

And while I would love to have one of those fabulous sets you see in the PB catalogs, it's just not practical for our lifestyle.

We need chairs that will dry quickly since most people have wet suits when they sit and the idea of covering or removing cushions each night was never going to happen.

That's when we remembered the chairs in the garage and decided to do the entire set over.

Here's where we started.

How To Replace Patio Furniture Chair Slings

First things first, we chose a paint safe for metal and didn't need a primer and painted the entire set. We didn't want new slings on faded, worn looking chairs.

Then we just picked a color ~ something classic ~ and bought 8 cans for about $6 a pop.


Next, I ordered slings.

1. Order Samples

Since so much time had passed from the date of our original order, the fabric we chose for the sliders had been discontinued.

Of course it had.

I looked all over the internet for inspiration and something that would coordinate, since I didn't want to reorder those slings, too.

I gathered samples, because computer monitors are not reliable. The color displayed on your end, may not be the color displayed on theirs.

I chose a very light sling in a fabric called Natura.

2. Measure

Most important step in this process?

Measure, measure and measure again.

Read the instructions on the website for how to measure for your specific piece of furniture.

Slings come in one piece or two, depending on your chair or chaise.

When in doubt call and ask for help, the fabric must fit perfectly or your chair will not hold up.

Trust me, measure.

Once everything was ordered, my husband took the chairs apart and spray painted them along with the table and umbrella stand.

This was how everything looked before...ick. 


 They sat like that, for almost a month.


The replacement slings are custom made and summer is the high season. Lucky for us, June was cold and rainy. When they finally arrived a few days before July 4th, they brought the warmth and sun with them.

I think it's because they came from Florida. 😉

Now. Taking the chairs apart was not hard.

Note: This one chair was reassembled after painting because we needed a place to sit for a few weeks while we were waiting for the new slings to arrive. That's why it's shiny.

3. Unscrew The Chair

My husband just literally unscrewed anything that was holding the chair together.

He stared with a wrench, but soon realized a drill would make it easier.

4. Remove The Old Sling

Once the seat was separated from the frame, he used a razor to slit the seat down the middle.

Then he removed the top bar and the plugs that secured the spline to shimmy it out of the channel.

5. Adding The Sling To The Chair

Putting them back together was a bear. There are a lot of tutorials online about ways to do it and tips to make it easier.

Supposedly there is a tool you can buy, but we just did it the old fashioned way with a lot of sweat and strength.

Also, keep in mind that each chair manufacturer  is a little different and each chair is made a little different. 

Some slings are mounted on the sides, others on the top.

The slings come with a new plastic spline that needs to be fed into the channel in the chair.

There were some recommendations to oil the channel, but my husband did not want to get oil all over the slings and he didn't want it to stain my light fabric.

Instead, he applied a little cooking spray to a q-tip and ran that up and down the channel.

We fed one side in at a time, turning and twisting the metal bar with the channel as we fed the spline through. That's the hard part.

It doesn't go in easily and you want the fabric to be taught so you need to stretch and pull it all the way to the end.

6. Reassemble The Chair

Once it's in, you just need to gather all your pieces and screws and reassemble the chair.

Then clip any of the excess spline away and put the plugs back in.


When we started this process, I was excited, but also a little bummed out at the prospect of being stuck with the same old, boring patio set for another decade.


 However, now that it's done, I absolutely love it.

The lighter slings, darker paint and addition of a few new colorful pillows and umbrella has breathed new life into the old set.

It's still super practical for our needs and didn't cost a lot. Plus, now I have six chairs and unified set.

The four slings were just under $40 each.

Although there was a huge variation in price from company to company. I paid $50 each for the first two and got quotes of up to $100 each, so shop around.


We chose the least expensive company this time and their work was lovely ~ exactly the same as the $50 ones.

So there you have it.

How to replace outdoor patio furniture slings to update an old set.

Definitely not a super easy DIY, but certainly doable and much, much less expensive than buying new.

And what could be better than that?

Happy Summer!

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