When you decide it’s time to paint your house, you may want to begin as soon as possible. After all, when you’re ready for change, you don’t want to sit on the idea for months on end. But depending on when you get the bug to paint your house, residential painters have some advice: make sure the weather is right to ensure the best paint job.
It may sound strange that seasons play a significant role in how your house painting project may turn out, but seasonal variations in weather and temperature are a key component of a successful paint job. This is especially true for those of us in and around the Orange County, NY, area, as the cooler months of fall may be a tricky time to paint our homes.
But for many, fall may sound like the perfect time to update your home’s exterior colors. Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of painting your home in fall.
Autumn in New York is a beautiful time of year. And for some homeowners, the changing of the leaves may spur the itch to change the color of their homes. While late August through November can certainly work for your home painting project, more challenges arise as we move closer to winter. Here’s why.
When we apply coats of paint to our homes’s exteriors, the ambient temperature needs to stay within a certain range and, of course, rain needs to be at a minimum. During the summer, New York’s heat throughout the day and relative warmth throughout the night helps the paint dry faster. However, the heat can also be a problem during the hottest weeks of the summer.
Extreme heat may cause paint to cure prematurely. In some cases, it can dry within minutes of being applied to your home. For this reason, some summer weeks (or perhaps the entire month of August) can be challenging to ensure paint is properly applied and cured.
Fall, however, offers cooler temperatures and, in turn, better conditions to paint. Especially early in the season, daily highs are often a perfect temperature for applying paint to your home’s exterior. Early fall offers us a shorter range of temperature variations, which present ideal conditions for painting our homes. Fall’s temperatures are ideal because the day’s give us the warmth needed for paint to dry at a steady pace, while night’s are cooler, but not so cool that the sudden plunge in temperature presents drying and curing problems.
In short, fall is an excellent time to paint your home’s exterior. It’s an especially beneficial season if you choose to update your home’s exterior color in late August and September as temperatures are friendlier to drying paint. October can work just fine, too, with some planning. But as November presses on, the conditions become increasingly difficult.
If you’re considering an exterior paint job in the fall, it’s best to begin planning as soon as possible so you can consider all factors that come into play. It can also take some time to really explore your color options—and this is a big decision. Fox Painting can help you choose from many colors and help you determine the shade that works best for you and your home, as well as provide any input and guidance you need to make a confident decision about your home’s new paint project.
We know that painting your home’s exterior can be a huge undertaking—but it doesn’t have to be. Reach out to Fox Painting today with any questions or to schedule your exterior paint project with us.
