How to Paint a House Exterior

Special thanks to Home Depot for sponsoring this post. All opinions are my own.

Our house is cute, but the exterior is a bit of a jumble! It’s light gray on the front, the back is dark gray, and the porch is delightful. Lol! The porch is white because we redid it last year. We’ve been wanting to paint the rest of our house white for ages and finally completed it this weekend. There’s nothing like the looming winter weather to speed things up! Here’s my tips on how to paint a house exterior.

This is the before photo. Not too shabby, but definitely not what I wanted. The shutters are small and unimpressive. I don’t like the dark trim and the peak needs a fun accent.

how to paint a house exterior

Let’s start with the video tutorial so you get an overview on what I did. Then, I’ll dive in with more details below:

If the video doesn’t work here, you can watch it on YouTube here. P.s. I’m trying to build that page up, so if you’d subscribe, I’d really appreciate that!

finding the perfect paint

The most important supply for this project is PAINT! Paint is transformative- especially on the outside of the house! You’ll want to use quality paint for good coverage and so it’ll stand up to the elements. Since a house is such a big area, figuring out the correct color can be tricky and you definitely want to get it right.

I’d suggest using the ProjectColor™app from Home Depot. It’s a free app and you can use it in two ways for figuring out paint for a house exterior. First, you can upload an image of your house and play around with switching out different paint colors! Here’s how my house looks painted Beloved Pink. It can give you a good idea of how a color will look. 

Second, if you have a house you love in your neighborhood, you can snap a picture of it and the ProjectColor™ app will color match a paint color for you!!! I’d suggest getting a sample pot of the color before 100% committing to the color, but it can be a great starting point. This picture is of my cabinets matched with Home Depot paint colors. I think they’d make great exterior paint colors! Honestly, I can’t wait to use the color matching tool for when I’m out and about and see a color I love.

I ended up going with the Ultra Pure White for my house to match my porch. Here’s the rest of the supplies I needed for this project-

supplies

• Behr Marquee Exterior Paint in Satin. Color- Ultra Pure White. I 5 gallon buckets
• Behr Marquee Exterior Paint in Satin. Color- Beloved Pink
• Paint Tray
• Paint Roller
• Extension Ladder
• Roller Extender
• Power Washer
• Scraper
• Exterior Caulk
• Caulk Gun
• Palm Sander
• 60 Grit Sanding Paper
• Gable Pediment
• Shutters
• Paint Pail
• Paint Brush

step 1 PREP

Start by prepping the house for painting. Prep is the key to getting a professional looking finish AND it’ll stay looking better longer with the correct paint.

Use a pressure washer to remove any dirt, chipping or peeling paint, and any mildew. Next, take a palm sander and sand down any imperfections. Our house has been painted in the last 5 years, but not properly. The paint was lose under the grey color and flaked right off. 

Side note, our house used to be pink before we bought it. It was known as the pink house to the neighbors. Wasn’t it adorable?! The house sure looked scary after the pressure washing and sanding, but we knew that good things were coming!

step 2 caulk and repair

Next, time for even more prep. The entire footer board on our house was rotted so we pulled it out and replaced it with a new one. If you have any rotting boards, now it the time to update them.

step 3 start painting!

And now, it’s time to paint! We ended up using a roller and a brush to paint the whole outside of our house. It was pretty slow going, but definitely doable. It was sure exciting to see the white exterior- it looked so much better than the sanded mess! If you’re painting in cooler temperatures, make sure it’ll be at least 40 degrees for 4 hours after you paint without any precipitation.

I also painted my shutters at this point so they’d be dry before installation. For the color, I went with Beloved Pink to match my front door. Behr paint just released their 2020 color trends and if you like pastels, Bubble Shell and Dusty Lilac are also good options!

step 4 finishing touches

Finally, it’s time to add on any trim or shutters or paint your doors to really finish off the paint job!

The part I am most excited about with the is project is the gable pediment. That’s a fancy word for adding pretty trim (or “ginger breading”) in the peak of our roof. We have trim on our porch and this’ll pull everything together! To prep for installation, my husband pre-drilled holes in the pediment.

Then, he climbed the super high ladder and drilled it in. Isn’t she lovely?!And then the cherry on top was putting on the pink shutters. I came out to see the progress and practically burst into tears- I had my Barbie dream house! 

after

When we moved into our house, I dreamed and dreamed about the day when we could transform the exterior. I am beyond grateful that my dream finally became a reality! This is what this sweet house is supposed to look like. And I love it!

faq

I thought I’d answer a few questions to wrap this post-

side note, how cute does the house look with my free little library?!

how long does it take?

My husband and I prepped and painted the front of our house in 4 days. We still need to do the side before winter.

how many coats

We did two coats. And I’d suggest that! Make sure to get quality paint so it’ll go on nice and thick. Even with that though, I’d do two coats.

spray or roll

To be honest, I started out spraying the paint on. That was nice for the cracks. But my husband dropped the sprayer and we need to get a new lid now- oops! So we ended up rolling on the paint. Personally, I prefer rolling the paint on because the sprayer takes SO much more prep and sometimes the sprayer is tricky to use.

should you prime?

Because we used a quality paint with primer built in, we didn’t bother. But it’s never a bad idea to prime first.

I am so, so happy with how the whole house matches now. It truly feels like home now! Let me know if you have any other questions and I’ll be happy to answer them in the comments!

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