How to Hang Your Cane Chair

Our Malawi Cane hanging chairs will instantly elevate the appearance of your home or hospitality spaces with their effortless and timeless allure. Setting them up can feel daunting, but once you know how, it’s pretty easy.  Here’s a simple step-by-step guide where we’ve outlined tools, techniques and some of our favourite knotting techniques.

Places to hang your hanging chair

• Porch / Balcony
• Kids room
• Bathroom (Yes, we really had one ordered for a bathroom - an Original Egg in white – stunning!)
• Living room
• Cosy nook
• From trees (suggest a carabiner hook for quick removal if it rains)

What you’ll need

1. Your Malawi Cane hanging chair

2. Hanging hardware

• * If you are attaching your chair to a ceiling joist, you will need a 20-30mm eye screw that can hold at least 140kg with thread at least 10cm long.
  * Two quick link chain connectors, S-hooks, or locking carabiners depending on your preference. All must be able to support at least 140kg.

3. Electric drill

4. Rope or chains

We recommend our Malawi Cane natural sisal rope to hang our Hanging Chairs. It is an untreated biodegradable 3-strand rope, that it tough and resistant for external use.  It can be easily spliced, but also has excellent knotting characteristics should you opt for a simple tie-off.

Rope details:

Determine how long your rope(s) need to be so that the bottom of the chair hangs 50-100cm off the ground. Measure from the ceiling to the chair’s attachment ring, lifted to its desired height off the floor, to find the length of rope you need and then add an extra 50cm for tying knots. You can adjust the length of the rope or cut off excess rope later if needed.

Our pre-cut ropes allow ample extra rope for knot tying and 2-4m ceiling heights.

Alternatively, you may prefer galvanized metal chains or marine-grade braided nylon, polyester, or polypropylene rope.  These are all other options that also stand up to the outdoor elements.

   

How to attach your hanging chair

If you have a Malawi Cane Original Egg or Hanging Pod Chair, you need one point to hang your chair from.  If you have a Malawi Cane Traditional Hanging Loveseat, you will need two points to hanging the chair from, approximately 130cm apart.

Step 1: Locate a ceiling joist in your desired location that is at least 15cm wide to ensure it can support the weight of the chair and person sitting in it. If your porch ceiling is covered, use a stud finder to locate a joist, which are typically horizontal ceiling supports. If you’re using a stud finder, mark both sides of the joist and then mark between the two lines to find the centre point. This is where the chair will hang from.

Step 2: Drill a pilot hole about 10cm deep into the centre-mark on the joist. Make sure that the drill bit you use is smaller than the width of the eye screw.

Step 3: Install the eye screw into the pilot hole carefully to ensure the wood does not split. Twist until all of the threading is no longer visible on the screw. Wedge a screwdriver through the eye if you need help tightening.

Step 4: Attach an S-hook or locking carabiner to the eye screw. Alternatively, feed rope direct through eye-screw hook. (We prefer the S-hook or carabiner option, as it saves you having to constantly re-knot)

Step 5: Attach one end of the rope to the chair’s hanging device and the other end of the rope to the S-hook or carabiner at the eye screw. There are different ways of doing this depending on the type of chair, often knots and carabiners are used.

Note: On the Malawi Traditional Hanging Loveseat, there is no requirement for knots at chair end, as the one length of rope pulls through both holes in one side of chair to go back up. Only one knot required at the top.

Favourite knots

Over the years we’ve tied a few knots for our chairs!  So, here’s a few personal favourites from the team!

Bowline French Knot: This is perhaps one of the simplest      and most versatile knots around, and it is so much easier to do that it may initially look! Great for using as the top knot on each side of our Malawi Hanging Loveseat (2-seater).

Hangman's Knot: This gives a really firm and sturdy-looking knot that can sit at both ends of your rope (directly above the chair, and up toward the ceiling joist).  We love it on Malawi Hanging Pod Chairs – it works well across all three sizes.

        

Knot diagrams with thanks to www.101knots.com

It’ll only take a few moments and perhaps a couple of practices before you’ll be securing and tying up hanging chairs as if you’ve been doing it your whole life. And knowing how to tie impenetrable knots is a worthwhile skill to have anyway!

Above all, don't get too tied-up on the look of your knots.  The most important thing is that they are secure and your hanging chair is installed - so you can sit back and enjoy the time relaxed and swinging away.