A two-story house in Dayton with a hipped roof, a center dormer and a porch across the front: an American Foursquare, the shape Dayton's older streets are full of. Its vinyl siding had gone a chalky white and the green shutters had faded with it. The homeowner wanted blue. Here is how we got there, and what painting vinyl takes to do right.
The house before
Nothing was wrong with the siding itself. Vinyl does not rot, and it was still tight to the wall. What it had lost was color. Sun does that to white vinyl over enough years, and the shutters, the trim and the detached garage out back had all gone the same tired direction.
Can you paint vinyl siding?
Yes, and people are surprised by that, because for years the answer was no. The rules are simple and they matter. The siding has to be clean, because chalky vinyl will shed paint. The paint has to be made for vinyl, a flexible acrylic that moves with the panels as they expand and shrink through an Ohio summer and winter. And the color cannot be much darker than the color the siding was made in, because dark paint soaks up heat and vinyl that gets hot enough will warp. Paint makers publish vinyl-safe color ranges for exactly that reason, and Sherwin-Williams lays out the whole process if you want the long version.
Where a house is chalky or has been patched, a bonding primer under the color is what keeps the finish on. Get those three things right and painted vinyl lasts. Get them wrong and it peels in a season.
The blue this homeowner picked sat inside that safe range, so the house could change color without changing how the siding behaves in the sun.
Spraying the house
Vinyl lap siding is all edges. Every course throws a shadow line, and a brush or a roller leaves the underside of each lap thin. We sprayed this house, which lays an even film over the face of each board and up under the lip of the one above it, and it is the right tool for a house this size.
Spraying means masking. Windows, doors, light fixtures, everything that stays its own color gets wrapped before the first pass. The trim came back white on top of the blue, and the shutters, which had been green, were painted black. That is the three-color scheme you see on the finished house: blue field, white trim, black shutters.
The garage too
A freshly painted house with a faded garage behind it looks like half a job, so the garage got the same treatment: the same blue on the siding, white on the trim and the side door. From the back yard the two buildings read as a set again.
The result
The blue gives the house its lines back. The dormer, the porch roof and the window trim all stand out in white against it, where before they were white on white and disappeared. Black shutters do the same job at the windows. It is the same house with the same siding, and it looks like a different property from the corner.
Thinking about painting your siding?
If your vinyl has gone chalky and you are weighing paint against replacement, we will come look at it and give you a straight answer. Sound siding in a bad color is a painting job. Cracked, loose or brittle siding is not, and we will say so. Our roofing and exteriors page covers the rest of what we do on the outside of a house, and if your home is brick rather than vinyl, this Centerville home is the painted brick version of the same story.
Book a free estimate or call (937) 888-WORK. Let's Build Something Limitless.
