Trojan Boat Forum

Does anyone have any thoughts on painting/dying a headliner? My F44 has lots of headliner in it that is old and yellowed and replacing it at this time is not an option. The headliner in there has thousands of little pin holes in it (by design) and I am concerned that painting the headliner will be a challenge for if some, not all of those holes fill with paint/dye it will not look right. From the research I have done, the products can be either rolled or sprayed on and not wanting to deal with over spray issues, I think rolling it on may be the answer. Does anyone have any experience painting/dying a headliner with the pin holes in it? Any recommendations on which product is best to use? Thanks again.

I have never painted mine but I do know that the holes must remain. From what I have read and understand, the holes are the means through which the headliner breathes. I think there are other threads here on the forum that address the issue that a simple search will turn up.

Is the headliner a vinyl or fabric? If it is vinyl, you can paint it. I did the headliner in one of the staterooms in a 46' MY that I used to own. I used spray can paint that was made for car upholstery. It looked good and it did not fill in the ventilation holes. I did a lot of spray painting inside that boat, so it was not a big deal to mask off the headliner area to contain the overspray. It looked very nice and was much easier than replacing the headliner, to say nothing of costing next to nothing in comparison to replacing the headliner. I did replace the headliner in the salon in that boat which was 13' wide and about 16' long. It was a lot of work, but I wanted a fabric headliner in the salon instead of the vinyl. I do not remember what the paint was that I used, but found it online by googling.

http://www.samsmarine.com/forums/showth ... =headliner

this is a step by step how to
we are getting ready to this
hope this helps

comodave wrote:Is the headliner a vinyl or fabric? If it is vinyl, you can paint it. I did the headliner in one of the staterooms in a 46' MY that I used to own. I used spray can paint that was made for car upholstery. It looked good and it did not fill in the ventilation holes. I did a lot of spray painting inside that boat, so it was not a big deal to mask off the headliner area to contain the overspray. It looked very nice and was much easier than replacing the headliner, to say nothing of costing next to nothing in comparison to replacing the headliner. I did replace the headliner in the salon in that boat which was 13' wide and about 16' long. It was a lot of work, but I wanted a fabric headliner in the salon instead of the vinyl. I do not remember what the paint was that I used, but found it online by googling.

+1 what Dave said.

I was thinking about your question and the only thing I came up with that made reasonable sense to me was spraying of some sort. I even considered airbrush with the right paint and spray pattern as a possibility.

Please let us all know how it goes for you. My headliner is good still, but I really hate the pinhole pattern. Looks like the view from the back seat of my grandmas '79 Impala. Not that being a teen in the 80's would have taught me anything about that.

Try a lot of bleach / mold remover cleaner with a small brush - I usually use a finger nail brush. Maybe a previous owner was a smoker and it could be from that!

Anyhow have fun with the boat - not many headliner inspectors out there that I am aware of!!

We just painted the headliner in the 2nd stateroom
We followed this step by step http://www.samsmarine.com/forums/showth ... =headliner
It gave us the wow factor
You cant tell the the differance between a new headliner or after we painting it
The color is spot on
It didnt cover any holes and we have the small small holes
We will be doing the rest of the headliner as we go
Looks like we had a new headliner installed
Got some pics on the phone there not great but if anyone is interested ill post what i got

8lug-Thank you for your message. I would be interested in seeing those pictures.

i hate to post these but its all i gotfirst pic is before the paint and 2nd is a close up pic of after paint
you can see how well it laid on the vinyl

Thank you very much for the pictures. The headliner came out great. That gives a good idea of what to expect because your headliner is identical to the one I have in my boat. Did you have any issues with the holes filling up and you needing to get the paint out?

The painted headliner looks amazing!!

Never knew that it could be done.

Which is why this site is SO AMAZING!!

the paint covered a few out of 100's of holes very very slightly but thats what the finish roller is for
once you paint the section you go back over it with the 4" dry roller and i hate to say it like this but it takes up all the extra paint if any at all
i couldnt believe the way it came out looking
the guy that came up with this should get a metal