Tutorial: Vinyl Paint Usage - Save Big

I found a custom ordered set of car seat covers for an LS400 at the junkyard and while I was re-doing them to my liking, I remembered why vinyl paint is so great. Floormatts, leather, cloth, plastic (so even your shifter) - it will paint them all. You can literally use this paint to change the color of your interior.

I've never done this before but here's a before and after. The first picture shows a seat cover I had actually made that had broke where it secures. The second picture shows the difference when I replaced the s&#$ty floormatts with Lexus LS400 ones - again, bought for I think $2.00 each at the junkyard. The seat covers were no more than $10.00 (for a fitted set that costs at least $80.00 new - each). Yes, it's rare to find ones that good but I have seen other ones where at least the size was right.

Before.

After.

Not much to be said. While most people didn't like the tweed, I did, but I admit this is much better. Now, these seat covers were originally completely black and the floormatts were blue and dirty. It took me two cans of Duplicolor Beige Vinyl Paint (you can buy it at any automotive store; I prefer Duplicolor) - $15.00 - to dye the matts, seat covers, and headrest covers leaving me with half of a bottle.

Having blue floormatts would have looked like crap, same as black seat covers in a beige interior. So instead of custom ordering all of that which would have cost me probably $140.00, I was able to do this for about $27.00. Oh I almost forgot, the steering wheel cover is from a junkyard aswell. I got it a long time ago for $2.00.  I don't consider myself a cheap person but I don't waste money, ever.

I didn't take a before picture but this is two coats for each floormatt. It was blue and dirty before. After the paint, they look nice again. With the way the pedals are in the LS400, pretty much anything that isn't the original matts or modified won't fit right - it sits on the gas pedal.

Let's get to how I painted the seat covers. It's very important that you set them up on something that will let you get at all the leather. I used three small boxes. Here is a seat cover before painting.

Nice but it doesn't fit the color scheme so I painted just the leather. In my opinion, it looks better this way - with a little bit of black accent.

I didn't take many pictures this time because I have a very similar tutorial that's probably a couple pages back now. Here are the steps. Little bit of advice - if you spray too much and you get drops starting to run, quickly wipe them with your finger. It will flatten everything and it won't be noticeable that you made a mistake. Also if you really hit a part of the cloth with too much paint on accident, you can use a black marker to cover that.

1. Lay it down somewhere that isn't windy in a way where you don't have to move the cover to get all the leather.
1b. If it's not possible, do it in two or three rounds (if the leather is on both sides, for example).

2. Very important. Read this carefully. Vinyl paint sticks to leather probably 15x better than it does to cloth. If you have time, tape off the cloth, but I didn't. The reason is because if you spray quickly and correctly, just hitting the leather, the overspray will be so minor that you can barely see it. After a couple weeks, it's gone from people sitting on it.

3. Look at this 'after' picture.

Technically this still needed one more thin coat. I have the headrest covers slipped onto bottles to help hold them stretched out.

Test how the bottle sprays first. Usually, this paint only sprays with the bottle up or tilted, not upside-down like some paints. What you want to do is spray along the leather, one piece at a time. Turn the bottle so it's spraying diagonally - this will help keep the paint targeted on the leather.

You will quickly notice how little paint actually sticks to the cloth if you overspray. If you look, you can see the overspray on mine. Again, you can avoid this by just using painter's tape.

Thanks to my readers. Please share this website with a friend if you enjoy it. I make no money (unless you count $1.76 in a year and a half) and do this as a labor of love. I was running around garages in Lithuania (Eastern Europe) when I was 5 years old. I was rallycrossing at around 18. Now I'm trying to build my legacy by leaving you guys with all the info I pick up.

PS. I finally got sleepy eyes on my headlights and I love them. That tutorial will be up at some point but I know people miss car articles so give it a week or two.