Exterior · 6 min read
Signs it’s time to repaint your home’s exterior
A practical walk-around for reading what your paint is telling you, and for sorting the cosmetic from the urgent before another Michigan winter.
Key takeaways
- A walk-around with a dark cloth, a screwdriver and good light tells you most of what you need to know about your paint.
- Fading, light chalking, mildew and bleeding stains are mostly cosmetic and can usually wait a season.
- Peeling, bare wood, deep cracks, failed caulk, soft trim and loose glazing let water into wood and shouldn’t wait another winter.
- Michigan’s exterior season is short, so look in spring and plan the work well before fall.
Walk around your house with a screwdriver and a dark cloth. Peeling, chalking, fading, cracking, failed caulk, bare wood, soft trim, mildew, bleeding stains and loose window glazing are the main signs it’s time to repaint. Some are cosmetic and can wait a season; anything that lets water into wood shouldn’t wait another winter.
Here’s how to do the walk-around, what each sign means, and how to sort what you find. It takes about an hour and no special skills.
How do you check your house for paint problems?
Pick a dry day with good light. Spring, after the snow melts, shows you what winter did; late summer leaves time to plan before the season closes. Bring:
- a dark cloth, for the chalk test
- a flat-blade screwdriver, for probing wood
- your phone, to photograph problem spots
- binoculars, for fascia, soffits and upper trim you can’t reach from the ground
Work around the house one wall at a time. Look low, at bottom boards, sills and door casings where water collects, and look high, under the eaves and along the gutters. Check every window, the porch, the railings and the steps.
Which signs are cosmetic and can wait?
These signs mean the paint is aging, but it’s still doing its main job: keeping water out of the wood. They can usually wait a season while you plan, as long as you keep an eye on them.
Fading on the sunny sides
Compare a south or west wall with a north one, or with paint sheltered under the eaves or behind a downspout. If the sunny walls look washed out, sunlight is breaking down the paint, and deep or saturated colors show it soonest. Fading alone is cosmetic, but it’s an early sign of the aging covered in our guide to how long exterior paint lasts.
Chalking
Wipe a dark cloth firmly across a sunny wall. If it comes away coated in powder the color of your paint, the surface is chalking: the binder is eroding and releasing pigment. Light chalk is normal aging. Heavy chalk means the film is wearing thin, and you may see it washing down in streaks onto brick or the foundation below. Either way, chalk has to be washed off before repainting, or new paint will stick to the powder instead of the wall.
Mildew
Gray, black or greenish specks on shaded walls, under eaves and behind shrubs are usually mildew. Dab a spot with diluted household bleach: mildew lightens quickly, dirt doesn’t. Mildew is mostly cosmetic, but it tells you the wall stays damp, and it has to be killed and cleaned off before any paint goes on. Our guide to mildew on siding covers how.
Stains bleeding through
Brownish streaks on cedar or redwood are usually tannins from the wood. Yellowish rings around knots are resin, and orange streaks below nail heads are rust. These are handled at repaint time with the right primer, typically a stain-blocking primer over knots and tannin stains and a rust-inhibiting one on nail heads; check the label for what each blocks. One exception: streaks running down from a gutter or a window corner can mean water is getting where it shouldn’t, so look for the source.
Which signs mean you shouldn’t wait another winter?
These signs mean water can get into the wood, or already has. Michigan winters make them worse quickly: water seeps into cracks and open joints, freezes, expands and pries them wider, and snow sits against sills and bottom boards for weeks. Deal with these before the cold sets in.
Peeling and flaking
Paint curling at the edges, lifting in sheets or littering the mulch in flakes has lost its grip. Look at the back of a flake. Bare wood underneath usually points to moisture; older paint underneath points to poor adhesion between coats. Our guide to why exterior paint peels explains how to read the pattern.
If your house was built before 1978, the old paint may contain lead. The EPA’s Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) rule requires certified firms and lead-safe work practices for paid work that disturbs more than 20 square feet of painted surface outside, or more than 6 square feet per room inside. The EPA’s RRP program page has the details.
Bare wood
Wherever wood shows through, on worn sills, steps, railing tops or beneath peeled paint, it’s exposed to both water and sun. Sunlight degrades a bare wood surface surprisingly fast, and weathered gray wood holds new paint poorly. Bare spots should be sanded back to clean wood and primed promptly.
Cracking and alligatoring
Fine cracks in the top layer of paint are an early, mostly cosmetic sign of aging. Cracks that run through to the wood are not, because they let water in. Alligatoring, a pattern of deep cracks that looks like reptile skin, usually shows up in old, thick layers of paint that have grown brittle. Paint like that often has to come off down to a sound layer or bare wood, a bigger prep job worth planning for.
Failed caulk
Check where trim meets siding, around windows and doors, and along corner boards. Caulk that has shrunk, cracked or pulled away from one side leaves an open joint, and open joints let water behind the siding and into end grain. Old caulk should be cut out and replaced, not buried. Just don’t caulk the bottom edges of lap siding; those gaps let the wall drain and dry.
Soft or rotting trim
Paint can hide rot, so probe. Push the screwdriver into window sills, the bottoms of door casings, the lower ends of corner boards, and fascia near downspouts. Sound wood resists the tip. Rotten wood lets it sink in easily, feels spongy, or comes away in soft, stringy fibers. Small soft spots can be dug out and rebuilt with exterior filler; deeper rot needs carpentry. Either way, find the water that caused it.
Failing window glazing
On original wood windows, common in Grosse Pointe’s older homes, glazing putty seals the glass into the sash. When it cracks, shrinks or falls out in chunks, water runs into the sash joints and the wood starts to rot. Failed glazing should be replaced before painting; our guide to painting old wood windows explains what’s involved.
Is it a paint problem or a water problem?
If peeling, rot or mildew keeps coming back in the same spot, the paint is the messenger. Look above and around the problem before blaming the paint:
- gutters that overflow, leak at the seams or dump water at the wall
- roof edges and flashing that let water run behind trim
- sprinklers that hit the siding, and shrubs that keep it damp
- soil or mulch piled against the bottom boards
- bathrooms, kitchens and laundry rooms on the other side of the wall, where humid air can work its way outward
Fix the source first. Repainting over an active water problem buys very little time.
When should you schedule the repaint?
Michigan’s exterior painting season runs roughly from late spring to early fall. Paint needs dry wood, temperatures within the label’s range, a dry forecast, and enough time to dry before evening dew. By October, those windows get short and unreliable.
That makes spring the natural time to look and plan. Do your walk-around once the snow is gone, and line up the work early, since exterior painters’ calendars tend to fill well before summer. Our guide to the right time to paint in Michigan goes deeper on weather and timing.
If protective problems turn up late in the fall, don’t force a full paint job into cold weather; paint applied in poor conditions can fail early. Make temporary repairs instead. Clear the gutters, get rot repaired, and recaulk open joints and prime small bare spots on a mild, dry day if the product labels allow it. Then schedule the full job for the next season.
Do you have to repaint the whole house at once?
Not always. If the paint is failing on every side, a full exterior repaint makes sense. But trim, sills and the sunny walls often wear out well ahead of shaded siding, and repainting just those parts can carry a house a while longer.
Keep in mind that new paint rarely matches weathered paint exactly, even in the same color, so small patches on siding can show. Repainting whole walls, breaking at corners and trim, hides the difference. A yearly look using our exterior maintenance checklist keeps small problems small.
Questions
How do you test exterior paint for chalking?
Wipe a dark cloth or your fingertip firmly across a sunny wall. If it comes away coated in powder the color of your paint, the surface is chalking because sunlight has broken down the paint’s binder. Light chalk is normal aging, but chalk has to be washed off before repainting, or new paint will stick to the powder instead of the wall.
Can you paint over peeling paint?
Not directly. Loose paint has to be scraped off, the edges sanded smooth, and bare wood primed before new paint goes on, or the new coat will peel along with the old. If peeling keeps returning in the same spot, find and fix the moisture source first. In homes built before 1978, old paint may contain lead, so disturbing it calls for lead-safe work practices.
Is it too late in the year to paint my house’s exterior?
It depends on the weather more than the date. Paint needs dry surfaces, temperatures within the label’s range, and enough time to dry before evening dew or a cold night. In Michigan those conditions get scarce as fall goes on, so if problems turn up late, make temporary repairs and schedule the full job for the next season.