How to Clean Outdoor Patio Cushions

A couple of weeks ago, we scored an amazing Facebook Marketplace deal – an outdoor cabana sectional set. (Okay, the husband gets credit for this one!)

Once we picked it up, we discovered the cushions had quite a bit of mildew – even though they’d been covered. We agreed it was still an amazing find, because a new cabana patio set was not in our budget ($600 – $800).

Of course, I went to social media to find the best advice for cleaning the cushion covers.

A few suggestions kept coming up over and over again: vinegar, dish soap and a scrubber (I didn’t use the sponge.)

I’m going to fully admit, I did not notice that every single cushion had a zipper until I was almost finished, so I did this by hand.

Here are some of the BEFORE pictures:

Here are the steps I used to clean these by hand:

Step 1:

Fill a bottle with undiluted Vinegar and spray directly onto the mildew.

Step 2:

Allow the vinegar to sit for 10 minutes or longer. (Try to choose a warm day without rain in the forecast, too.)

Step 3:

Fill a bucket with water and dish soap. Dip the scrubber into the water and soap to scrub.

Step 4:

Finally, allow your cushions to dry.

As a side note: I only scrubbed one part of each cushion per day. This did take several days, but I wanted to be sure the spots I did had time to dry. After all of that work, I did not want to risk getting more mildew.

This did work really well. I am planning on giving these a rinse in the washer, too (now that I’ve discovered the zippers), but I still feel good about removing it by hand first.

AFTER: