Plastic outdoor furniture doesn’t go with much but here are a few tips in painting your plastic to give it the look you want. Painting plastic furniture and bins isn’t that much different than painting any other type of furniture, except for a few things to grab your pen and paper. Here are a few tips to make sure you prepare your plastic for their new look.

1. Sanding doesn’t really work.
You can’t really sand plastic.  If you want to scuff up the surface a little for extra adhesion, you can use a really fine grit, like 320-400 grit sandpaper.  But plastic doesn’t take well to sanding, it just kind of chips, peels – I wouldn’t advise it.

2. It’s Already Pretty Absorbent
Plastic is a pretty porous material.  You know from experience, probably, that by leaving tinted foods in a plastic bowl that you can end up staining the bowl and have an impossible time getting the colour out.  So, paint will adhere to plastic better than say, metal.

3. It needs to be clean before you start
I would use Windex to clean the plastic really well and get rid of all oils, waxes, etc or anything that would cause the paint to not adhere to the plastic.  After you have cleaned your piece, make sure you have dried it completely so that no water gets trapped underneath the paint. I’d leave it a day or two in the sun to make sure it’s properly dried out.

4. Picking the Paint
Now you don’t have to use a paint that is designated for painting plastic only.  It’s great to do, but it’s not a necessity.  So don’t feel restricted to only a type of paint that is specifically designated for plastic.  If you want to use a paint or spray paint that is not designated for plastic, I would suggest using a good primer.  Any oil based primer is great.