Dash Seats, Steering Wheels etc... If it's inside your Civic then it's in here.
By pyang004
#352349 September 2014

My civic that had really bad crusty seats. I replaced the seats with some cheap ebay seats around May, 2013. Over a period of the summer, that's 3 months the seats were badly sun baked and faded. It's been 3 years since then and I finally got around to finding a solution. The seat were still perfectly fine, just really faded. I was gonna try to use some black carpet dye, but with a quick search I found this.

Simply Spray Upholstery Fabric Paint. http://www.sprayitnew.com/collections/simply-spray-upholstery-fabric-paint
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It's advertised for indoor furniture and outdoor patio furniture. It says it works well on car upholstery as well. So I decided to give it a shot at $12 a can. Please read through the website. They have several must know tips before purchasing the color you want.


Here are the sun baked seats.
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I decided to do the stock back seats to match.
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Here is the finished passenger side seat. It looks brand new again. Minus the stains on the seats that are shown darker than the rest of the seat.
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Before painting/dying, tape off anything you can. Anything you can't tape off, make sure to wipe with a wet cloth right after you finish the coat of paint you are working on. I wiped with a wet cloth then immediately wiped with a dry cloth to get all of the excess dye off. The stuff is labelled as paint, but it's actually a watery dye. It comes in a can and is spray similar to spray paint. The technique is a little different because of the nozzle and medium. At full can the spray is strong and consistent, but below half can you can feel the can sputter. When you spray, you have to fully press the trigger quickly and release quickly. If you keep the trigger at half throttle the nozzle will spit blobs of dye. If you get blobs, you can rub them into the material. I found it best to just hold the trigger and run across the entire seat. The dye does not build up in one spot like it usually does with a can of spray paint. The only techniques I found similar between regular spray paint and this stuff is that the first coat is a light coat. Then you just go heavy on the rest.

Here are the comparison to the finished results and the old faded seat.
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The passenger seat used 2.5 cans for 3 coats. 1 light coat and 2 heavy coats. That means 5 cans for the 2 front seats at $12 a can = $60
The back seats took about 5 cans for 4 coats. The material required an extra coat to appear more black. That's 10 cans total for the project and 2 left over. Maybe I can test them on my seat belts.
I purchased 12 cans for $124 + shipping.

Here is the first coat on the back seats.
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Yes, I recycle...

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I finished the last coat on the back seats today. Waiting for it to dry and then reinstallation. The material on the seats seems to be stiffer now because of the dye, but the company says that's normal. You can get the softness back by rubbing or brushing the seats. I figured every day use will do that. If you use the paint/dye on clothing you're suppose to machine wash it to bring the softness back. The back seats are the old fuzzy material seats. The paint/dye stiffened the fuzz and now they act like weak velcro on my cotton shirt. I'll probably run a brush through the rear seats to soften the material up.

The Civic seats were partially vinyl wrapped on the sides and around the bottom of the cushion. I couldn't tape them off because of the soft material and got lazy and didn't wipe them right after a coat of paint/dye. The paint/dye does not like to be applied on vinyl. The company makes specific paint/dye for specific materials. This upholstery paint/dye does not apply well on vinyl. It will collect like water drops or run if heavy. The paint/dye is now dried on the vinyl and looks bad. Now I need to get some black vinyl paint to touch up these parts.

I'll see if I can get a picture of the rear seats installed and if my phone camera can capture the black in the seats better. The material of the OEM seats doesn't allow the seats to be sprayed completely black. The roots are still a little bit of the old color. But the seats are black enough for me and turned out pretty good.

***UPDATE 3/2/15***
The seats are still in very good condition. Some of the dye did lift onto my clothes during some rainy days, as to be expected. The company states this as well. The dye currently does not come off of the chairs anymore. There is a little bit a wear/fade on the areas of the chairs where I tend to rub a lot when getting in and out of the chair.