Painting Stucco Walls: 3 Important Tips for Success

Painting stucco walls can give your home the facelift it deserves – even making it look brand new. Use this guide to have the best chance of success when painting your exterior.

When your stucco is fresh and new, it makes your house look neat, tidy, and well cared for. However, when time passes, that stucco can start looking a little unloved. If your stucco exterior is in need of some TLC, then it’s time to repaint it and bring it back to its former glory.

Here 3 steps to painting stucco walls to ensure the best job possible and to make it look as good as new.

What is Stucco?

To ensure you’re using the right materials when painting stucco walls, you need to understand what it is first. Stucco is most often a mixture of limestone or cement, blended with sand and water to create the material that’s used on your exterior walls.

It’s applied to metal wire or lath, to create a sturdy surface for your walls. This home exterior is known to hold paint well, so it’s perfect if you want a surface you can easily paint and maintain over the years.

Tip 1: Preparing Your Stucco to Be Painted

Before you start painting, you’ll need to prepare the walls for the paint. If you try to apply fresh paint over old without doing any prep work, you’ll find that the old paint will flake off under the new paint. This means that you’ll only have to paint the wall again… soon.

If you have brand new stucco on your exterior walls, then you’ll need to leave it for a period of time to cure. It’s currently recommended that you wait at least 60 days for it to cure and become stable enough for you to paint. You’ll want to avoid touching it too, during this time.

Patching

Take a look at your walls, to see if there are any spots that need to be patched up. Some sections of stucco can come off if it was applied a long time ago, and has been exposed to the elements.

You’ll need to buy a stucco patching kit, and follow the instructions to ensure the section is patched up properly. Leave it to dry for as long as the instructions tell you to, to ensure it sticks.

Washing

Then, you’re going to need to wash the walls. This will remove any loose stucco or paint still sticking to the walls that could interfere with the new paint job. Most experts agree that the best way to do this is to use a pressure washer. This will ensure that you can reach every part of your exterior walls, and remove everything before you start painting stucco walls.

Use a low setting to avoid causing damage to the stucco exterior. Make sure to angle the washer away from windows and doors to avoid accidental breakages.

Remember that stucco is porous, and so it’ll hold in moisture. Once you’ve washed it down, you’re going to need to let it dry totally. This is why many homeowners choose to wash their walls in the summer when the heat will dry them out more quickly.

Tip 2: Painting Stucco Walls & Exterior

Now that you’ve prepared fully, you’re going to start painting them.

First of all, you’re going to need to apply a masonry primer to the walls. This will prep your walls for painting and help them hold the paint better. This shouldn’t be too difficult to find in hardware stores, so pick some up and get painting.

If there are stains on the exterior stucco that you couldn’t remove with washing, pick up a stain blocking primer. This stops them from coming through the paint and ruining your hard work.

Priming

The best way to get the primer on the walls is to get a roller with a thick nap to it. This will help you get into all the nooks and crannies of the walls, without using too much force.

Once the primer is on and has dried totally, you’re ready to begin painting your stucco. Remember, stucco increases the surface area of your walls. If a bucket of paint says it covers 400 square feet of wall, assume it will cover about 200 square feet of exterior walls. Again, take the thick nap roller and roll the paint onto the surface. Use a paintbrush to cut in around windows and doors.

If you need a second coat, then refer to the paint instructions to see how much drying time you should leave between coats. Once you’re done, don’t forget to clean all your equipment thoroughly, so it’s ready to be used again.

Once you’ve painted your walls, they should last for at least 15-20 years, especially if you utilized elastomeric stucco coating. Do the job well and you won’t have to worry about it for a long time to come.

Tip 3: Hiring A Painting Company To Paint Your Stucco

All this information on painting stucco walls is useful, but you may not be able to do it yourself.

Why not?

Maybe you work long hours, and you just don’t have the time to devote to doing this job properly. Maybe you’re not entirely sure how to go about it, and don’t want to make any mistakes.

Whatever the reason, you can hire an expert to get it done for you. There are a lot of benefits to hiring a painting company to handle your stucco for you. You’re hiring in their expertise, so they’ll be able to tackle any patches in the stucco or handle the washing thoroughly, so you know nothing is going to be missed.

Because they’re experts, you know that paint job will last you for a long time. In fact, many companies will offer you a guarantee on how long you should expect that job to last. If you don’t have the skills or time to paint your walls, hiring experts can be the best idea for you.

Painting stucco walls will make the world of difference to your home. Get the equipment in now and start preparing your walls. Before long, your stucco home will look as good as new.