How to Clean Your Patio Furniture and Accessories - Your Ultimate Guide 2023

Have you ever wondered about how to clean your patio furniture and accessories? Cleaning your patio furniture and accessories can seem like a challenge, but if you ask us, it doesn’t have to be! As such, today, we have outlined some of the key things you need to know about how to clean your patio furniture and accessories. Hopefully, this will allow you to implement the most effective cleaning strategies going forward.

In this article you will be informed:

• Why Should I Clean my Patio Furniture and Accessories?

• How to Clean Your Patio Furniture and Accessories Step by Step

  • How to Clean Your Patio Umbrellas Step by Step

  • How to Clean Your Outdoor Furniture Step by Step

  • How to Clean Your Outdoor Cushions Step by Step

• How Often Should I Clean my Patio Furniture?

  • How to Reduce Cleaning Frequency

• Final Thoughts

Why Should I Clean my Patio Furniture and Accessories?

First, it’s important to consider why you should clean your patio furniture and accessories. This is vital for several reasons, including:

• Preventing mold from building up on your patio furniture

• Keeping your patio furniture hygienic and safe to use all year round

• Ensuring your patio furniture works as intended (e.g., by preventing rusting)

• Extending the expected life of your patio furniture

• Keeping your patio furniture in a useable condition (i.e., preventing it from getting dirty)

These four factors are crucial to consider since they directly relate to how well you can enjoy your new patio furniture. Of course, patio furniture is designed to withstand environmental conditions to a degree; however, exposing your patio furniture for years without cleaning it will cause irreversible damage often.

How to Clean Your Patio Furniture and Accessories Step by Step

Cleaning your main patio furniture regularly is highly important to prevent the aforementioned issues. Fortunately, this is where our experts can help. It’s important to consider here that every material has different cleaning requirements to achieve the best results.

How to Clean Your Patio Umbrellas Step by Step

If you have gorgeous patio umbrellas on your property, such as our Bluu cantilever umbrellas or a Bluu market umbrella, you’ll need to take specific steps to clean them carefully. It’s important to consider that a patio umbrella typically has two main parts to clean: the pole and the canopy itself. We’ll address the pole in a later section, but for now, we’ll look at how to clean your patio umbrella’s canopy easily and safely.

Canopy (Fabrics)

Cleaning your patio umbrella canopy doesn’t have to be majorly difficult. Still, it’s a somewhat time-consuming process. If you can use a canopy cover, this may be much less involved, luckily; fortunately, the Bluu umbrella with Outtra fabric comes with a cover included in the package!

1. Remove canopy: Remove the canopy from the frame of the umbrella and remove any loose dirt by shaking the canopy out. Be careful not to let the canopy touch the ground at this point, or else it could pick up even more debris!

2. Clean with warm water and detergent: Clean any specific stains that might be present on the canopy with a gentle solution of warm water and detergent. Allowing this mixture to sit atop the top of the stain before scrubbing it can allow the detergent to lift off as much of the stain matter as possible. Rise the solution off once you’re done. This may need to be repeated for more stubborn stains.

3. Wash on a cold cycle: Put the canopy in a cold-temperature wash to fully clean it without risking damage to the material. You could do this manually, but putting the canopy in the washing machine may be easier generally. However, try to avoid using hot water, as this could cause some canopies to shrink.

4. Air dry: Allow the canopy fabric to air-dry before reinstalling it back onto the frame. This also helps prevent wrinkles or creases from developing in the material, which can undeniably be unsightly.

5. Secure the canopy: Always check your canopy is tightly secured once it’s reinstalled. We recommend covering the canopy with a specialist canopy cover to prevent stains from taking hold in the future.

How to Clean Your Outdoor Furniture Step by Step

When cleaning your outdoor furniture, it’s generally best to start with a mild cleaner. This helps avoid damage to the surface of your furniture. For example, when cleaning your Bluu patio umbrella frames made from aluminum materials, it’s best to be cautious; using strong cleaners can damage the material.

We recommend against using bleach unless all else fails; bleach is highly corrosive and can cause damage to many materials. It’s also potentially dangerous to use, so we recommend against this. If you do use bleach, always follow all instructions on the product exactly.

Tempered Glass

Tempered glass can offer a stunning aesthetic, and so it’s being used in more and more furnishings. However, if you decide to invest in tempered glass materials for your patio furniture (such as an outdoor table), you should always know how to clean it effectively.

Cleaning tempered glass always needs to be done with care. Indeed, rough materials can easily scratch your tempered glass surface. As such, we recommend that you use delicate cleansers and soft, scratch-free cloths to clean your tempered glass surface.

The best way to clean tempered glass is as follows:

1. Make a mild solution with detergent and warm water and mix until bubbles form

2. Pour the detergent solution into a spray bottle (ideally) and genty cover the surface of your tempered glass with the solution

3. If you do not have a spray bottle, spread a very thin amount of solution over the surface of the glass

4. Allow the detergent solution to rest on the surface of the tempered glass for around five minutes, if the surface is flat (or several minutes if the surface is vertical or angular)

5. Gently remove the solution with a soft sponge. Always ensure any debris is removed rather than being scratched over the surface of the material

6. Rinse the surface of your tempered glass with warm water

7. Wipe the glass dry with a soft cloth; leaving the glass to air dry may cause watermarks

Metals

Many different metals may be present in your outdoor patio furniture. For example, many of our gorgeous Bluu patio umbrella frames are made from aluminum; meanwhile, many garden chairs may be made from iron or stainless steel.

Each material offers unique benefits and drawbacks, but cleaning them requires care at all stages. Of course, when cleaning metal patio furniture, you should always remove any extras before getting started.

To clean your metal patio furniture, simply follow the below steps:

1. Wash away loose debris with a garden hose, a bucket of warm water, and a sponge. Many pieces of debris will easily dislodge from metal surfaces with just a little elbow grease.

2. Next, manually remove any rust from your metal surface, if possible. A very small wire brush or paint scraper may be able to remove spots of rust. Don’t panic if it doesn’t remove all of the rust yet, though!

3. Apply a small amount of baking powder and water to the stained area for any rust or corrosion. Allow this mixture to sit on top of the rusted area for a few minutes. Then, with a gentle brush, sweep away the material in the direction of the grain. This process should dislodge a lot of the rust. Then, simply rinse with warm water.

4. If you have noticed hard water stains on your metal (this looks like chalky imprints), you may need to make a specific solution at this point to remove them. A 25% to 50% vinegar and warm water solution is usually enough to dislodge calcium or lime stains from your steel materials; simply apply this with a soft cloth, then rinse with warm water.

5. Finally, dry the area with a soft cloth to prevent watermarks from forming.

Plastics

Plastics are often among the easiest materials to clean. This is since many plastic furniture options are both highly durable and waterproof; as such, you can clean them more regularly with stronger cleaning ingredients and more pressure without having to worry about scratches, etc. This is part of why plastics are a growingly popular option in many cases.

Of course, there are numerous different types of plastic materials. Some common forms of plastic that you might find in your property include woven resin, molded resin, and HDPE. For example, our range of deck boxes, chairs, and cooler tables are all made from HDPE and can offer a highly versatile solution for countless applications.

There are several options to clean plastic outdoor furniture. Some of the most common options for cleaning plastic outdoor furniture include the following steps.

1. Make a mild cleanser for gentle dirt with a mixture of warm water and baking soda / bicarbonate of soda for very gentle debris. Apply this mixture to the area and gently apply pressure to clean off any loose dirt.

2. For more stuck-on dirt, if the baking soda solution alone doesn’t clean the plastic thoroughly, mix warm water and detergent together and allow to sit on the stain for a few minutes. Rinse the mixture off again with warm water, applying gentle pressure with a rag if needed.

3. Finally, to clean off any stubborn stains on your plastic outdoor furniture, try applying distilled white vinegar with a soft cloth or rag to the stain, allow it to soak in slightly, and then rinse off gently with warm water before proceeding to clean as normal

Some people assume that bleach can be used on white plastic furniture; however, this is often not the case. Indeed, in many cases, bleach will actually eat away at your plastic furniture, doing more harm than simply removing the stain. As such, you should always try to use a gentler cleaning solution first to ensure you’re not damaging the material.

How to Clean Your Outdoor Cushions Step by Step

Every outdoor cushion is unique. As such, we recommend carefully following the specific instructions on your outdoor cushion. However, as a general rule, you can follow the steps below to clean your outdoor cushions.

1. Remove any dirt or debris from the cushion at the first opportunity. Never allow your cushion to stay stained; the longer the stain is left, the harder it is to remove.
2. Take the cushion out of the outer casing, and wash the outer casing as appropriate. Often, you’ll be able to put this in your washing machine or otherwise wash it by hand with a little fabric detergent.
3. Washing the cushion itself is a little trickier since it depends on the type of cushion filling you have. However, fortunately, most outdoor cushions should – by their nature – be waterproof. As such, soaking your outdoor cushion in a warm bath or bucket of water alone may be enough to dislodge any built up stains and dirt within the cushion.

How Often Should I Clean my Patio Furniture?

There’s no hard and fast rule for how often you should clean your patio furniture. However, most people agree that you should clean your outdoor patio furniture around once per season or more.

However, if your patio furniture is not getting damp or dirty, you could leave this up to personal discretion. Inevitably, it depends on what you’re comfortable with doing. Still, clean patio furniture is often much nicer to use than dirty furniture, so this is well worth considering to keep your garden comfortable and enjoyable.

How to Reduce Cleaning Frequency

No one really likes cleaning any more than we have to. With this thought in mind, the following steps may help reduce the frequency of cleaning for your outdoor patio furniture:

• Always put furniture away when not in use. For example, furniture such as a patio umbrella can be folded away during the winter months to reduce contamination overall. In doing so, you won’t have to worry as much about cleaning. Bluu’s excellent deck boxes are the perfect solution here, offering up to 120 gallons of storage.

• Invest in covers for your patio furniture to help prevent it from getting dirty. For example, our Bluu patio umbrella covers are the perfect way to contain and protect your umbrella during conditions that might otherwise make it dirty!

• Clean up as you go! If you can clean up as you go – for example, while packing away a set of cups from your last catch up with friends – you may actually need to reduce the amount you need to clean in the long run. This prevents stains from taking hold as badly, making it easier to clean your patio furniture.

Final Thoughts

Of course, many people assume that cleaning patio furniture will be hard. However, it doesn’t have to be with the right tools! If you’ve been looking for new ways to clean your patio furniture, we hope today’s guide may have helped. If not, you can also get more cleaning advice from Porch's experts with the link here.

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