Sharing is caring!

So one night a few weeks ago I decided rather hastily that I wanted to re-stain our deck…. and add a painted rug design on the deck. Cue the looks from the hubby. Nice weather was being predicted (and by nice I mean no rain for us here in Oregon!) and I wanted to get outside and tackle projects. Now we had talked about re-finishing our deck at some point. But in the hubby’s mind I think this meant a little later down the road, as in months or next year.

I told him not to worry as I would do the majority of the work. Again cue looks from the hubby! But I did work hard and am proud of what I accomplished, well except for the sunburn on my back. Look for a more detailed post later of our entire deck reveal.

Design

I am really excited to share this painted rug project with everyone as it was so much fun! I had seen multiple Pinterest examples of painted rugs on decks and patios but no design I particularly liked. Since I hadn’t found anything on Pinterest I had only the vision in my head to use as a guide. I wanted it to be simple and the vision in my head were the color turquoise with a white flower design.

How To Paint an Outdoor Rug:

Here are the steps to complete this project, if you are so inclined!

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience, this means that if you click on a link and end up making a purchase I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. See my full disclosure and privacy policy for more information.

The first step is to tape off the area, I decided to make my rug a 5×7, as you can see in the picture below.

this …

Paint

With paint colors in mind I went to our local Habitat for Humanity Restore. I hoped to find both turquoise and white exterior paint. The white exterior was easy to find in a quart size and only $2.00 but not the turquoise. I decided to check out one of the local Home Depots, one always seems to have an excellent selection of clearance paint. I was very excited to find a gallon of a Behr Pro Exterior Satin Paint for only $9.00!! Unfortunately I have no idea of the name of the color because they painted over that on the top, below is a picture of the paint. It was not as bright of a turquoise that I had envisioned but for that price I wasn’t going to turn it down. I would describe the color as more of a robin’s egg blue.

I applied two coats of the blue paint with a roller and let it dry a full day before adding the mum flower design.

Mum Flower Design

Next comes the fun part! I wanted a random look to my flower pattern and wanted some of the flowers to be cut off by the edge. If you desire a more uniform look I would suggest measuring between each flower. I started at the lower bottom corner and used painters tape to make sure the stencil was secure in place.

The small foam roller worked great for the stencil as it was designed for smooth surfaces. Make sure to use as little paint as possible on the roller as you want to keep the paint from leaking into the blocked areas. I applied two coats to the stencil and then carefully lifted the stencil straight up.

Also to make sure the lines remained as crisp as possible I rinsed the stencil after each flower was painted on. This is definitely more time consuming but you will be happier with your results.

So here is my funny life moment with kids. While I headed to the laundry room to clean off the stencil my 3-year-old daughter came outside and I had instructed her to not touch anything.

Well kids being kids this is what happened:

When I came back outside she immediately said “I painted a horse Mom, I just wanted to help you, I like helping people.” (Cue the tears and the heart melting.) At that point I couldn’t be mad and just had to roll with it until the end. And I had to look at the positive in that she didn’t paint into my designs so all I had to do was paint over the blue.

Painted Rug Reveal

All in all this project only cost me about $30 in new materials and was completed in a couple days time. This space is becoming so much more inviting every day and I can’t wait to share the entire space soon!

And from the side:

Update as of 2020:

The painted rug had taken a beating over the years from the weather so I gave it a little refresh with some cleaning and new paint. I chose not to repaint the flowers since after I applied the aqua paint it looked pretty good!

I just used some dawn soap, warm water and a scrub brush to clean the entire deck area of the rug first before painting.

I used painters tape on the edge and just used a brush to apply a new coat of paint being careful around the mum pattern.

Save

Save

Sharing is caring!