Exterior Paint Guide: Choosing The Right Paint for Your Home
Nothing rejuvenates your home quite like a fresh coat of paint. With endless colors, types of paint, and several different brands and products on the market today finding the right exterior paint can be challenging at best. With a little patience and the proper guidance, however, you can find exterior paint that is right for your home. Remember that exterior paint essential serves two functions. It is designed to both protect your home and enhance the overall design. As you are choosing your paint keep those two main factors of exterior painting in mind.
The Essentials
No matter what brand of exterior paint you go with or even how much you spend, all quality paint carries the same essential characteristics. For instance, at the most basic level, your paint should adequately conceal the surface that you’re painting on. While this depends on how the paint is applied and how much is applied, it also depends on the thickness of the paint itself. Another quality that you want to look for is how long the paint retains it’s color or tone once it’s applied. When you’re buying paint ask some vital questions such as how easily the paint chalks, chips, blisters, and how quickly after initial application.
Don’t Forget The Primer
Home surfaces like bare wood or siding require a solid primer as a base before applying the paint. Primers come in oil and water base with several varieties to choose from. Although a water based primer is perfectly acceptable in many situations, Oil based primers work best with stained wood and metal surfaces. There are also designated primers for other certain types of wood frames, concrete and even steel, iron, and aluminum. What this means is that for any home you may be looking at 3-5 different types of primer or paint in order to complete the job.
Two Min Types of Paint
Just as primer is available in water and oil, so is paint. Selecting the right type of paint is absolutely critical as this will give you the right results in the long run. Exterior paint has to withstand all the extremes that mother nature can throw at it. Paint has a special mixture that is specifically designed for all the components of your home. For instance, there is gutter paint that adheres to steel and aluminum which are often what gutters are made of. If your home is protected by vinyl siding, then there are oil and latex products that apply perfectly to vinyl surfaces. If your home is made of brick, concrete, stucco, cement or shingles, then this requires a very different type of paint. You also need to consider roof paint, and of course, various stains for your deck or porch.
How to Prepare Your Surface
Most homeowners think that new paint can be applied over the old paint and provide the same seal and protection. While it is possible to paint over your interior walls, this should never be done around the outside of your home. Even the best paint on the market will not properly stick to the old paint. So asking a professional paint to skip this step in order to save time or money will inevitably end in disaster. Surfaces should be stained and scraped in order to remove the old paint so that a fresh new coat can be properly applied. This will give a fresh new professional look that is unparalleled and virtually guarantee that your paint job will last as long as it should.
