How to Hang a Porch Swing

There’s nothing more relaxing than sitting on your porch on a nice 75-degree weather day, swinging in the breeze with a nice cold drink in your hand. The only noise you hear are the birds chirping and the occasional rustle of the leaves in the wind. For a moment, everything seems right with the world as you relax on your newly built porch swing.

That would be you, but…

You don’t know how to hang it. And what good is a porch swing if you don’t know how to hang it? Enough chatting–let’s solve that so you can get to enjoying the nice weather.

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Tools

• Drill
• ¼” drill bit
• Ratchet/Impact Driver
• Bolt Cutters – (if needed to cut off extra chain)

How to Hang a Porch Swing

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Step 1: install the hardware on the swing

Start by installing the eye head lag screws on the sides of the bottom of the swing. Mark the locations for the screws – all of them will go 2 inches from the bottom – one on each side on the front armrest support and one on the back armrest support (ensuring they are even on both sides).

Pre-drill the holes with a ¼ inch drill bit. When you screw them in, make sure you don’t screw the eye head screw in too much where it goes through the boards. 

Note: you can put a screwdriver through the eye screw and use that as leverage to twist it in more easily.

Step 2: mark where you want to hang your swing

Determine the location you’d like to hang your porch swing, ensuring you find a solid beam to support the weight of the swing. Ideally you would have 3-4 feet of clearance for swinging forward and backward and then > 10 inches on each side (we ended up with a little less on one side because of some hanging errors, but we’ll get to how to avoid those later 😉

Hold your swing hardware up where the hooks are approximately 1-2” wider on each side than the bench swing width and mark the holes with a pencil.

STEP 3: install your hanging hardware

Drill pilot holes in the places you marked with a ¼” drill bit.

Hold the swing hardware up and install it by screwing the 3/8” lag screws in with the 3/8” washer on it. You can either use a ratchet or an impact driver to screw it in.

Note: once you get close to tightening it all the way, slow down and do NOT over tighten or the head of the lag screw could come off (that happened to us twice before we realized the problem, which is why we had to move our swing over since the screw won’t come out once the head comes off)

Step 4: hang the swing

Once the hardware is tightened on the ceiling where you want the swing, attach the 3 ft chain pieces to the eye head screws using the quick links, then attach one 4 ft chain on each side to connect the 2 – 3 ft chains to it using another quick link.

Attach the carabiner clip that came with the swing hardware to the top of the 4ft chain and then hang one side at a time onto the swing hardware (this part is helpful to have someone there holding it while you go on the ladder to connect it.)

Now all that’s left to do is test it out and enjoy. I’m envisioning a lot of sweet tea sippin’, porch swing swingin’ days in your future!

Looking for some DIY porch swing plans? Get yours here!