Exterior painting across Cornwall

Exterior painting in Cornwall is a different job from exterior painting inland. Salt-laden air, wind-driven rain off the Atlantic and long damp spells attack a coating from every direction, and a specification that would last for years in a sheltered Midlands street can fail within a couple of winters on an exposed Cornish elevation. The south-west facing walls take the worst of it, and that is where the preparation has to be most thorough.

So the job starts with the wall, not the tin. Render is washed down to get the salt and green growth off, loose and blown areas are cut out and repaired, chalky old paint is stabilised, and cracks are filled before any coating goes on. Skipping that stage is the reason so many exteriors look fine in October and start peeling by March.

One customer's review describes it from her side: the cottage was cleaned and prepared before two coats of exterior paint went on. Another had the outside of a bungalow and garage done in four days through a heatwave. Both jobs went the same way, wash, repair, prime where needed, then coat.

A great deal of Cornish housing is solid-walled granite or stone, often rendered, and some of it is lime-rendered or listed. Those walls need to breathe. Sealing them behind a non-breathable coating traps moisture in the structure, and the damage that follows costs a great deal more than the decorating did. On older properties we use masonry paint that lets the wall dry out, and we will say so if a wall needs a specialist lime finish rather than paint.

Modern rendered houses and bungalows are more straightforward, but they still need the wash-down and the crack repair, and the paint still has to be a proper exterior masonry coating rather than something left over from inside.

Pebbledash and roughcast are common across west Cornwall and take more paint and more time than a smooth wall. It is worth knowing that before comparing quotes, because the cheapest number for a dashed house is often the one that has not allowed for it.

Painted timber is where exteriors fail first: windowsills, sash and casement frames, front doors, fascias, soffits and bargeboards. We rub back to sound paint, treat any soft timber, prime bare wood, and rebuild the coats so the joints are sealed. A front door in a deep blue, green or red is a Cornish tradition for a reason, and it is also the part of the house that gets looked at most.

Garages, sheds, gates and outbuildings are usually done at the same time so the whole property reads as one job and the scaffold or ladders only go up once.

Surfaces need to be dry, the temperature needs to sit above the minimum for the product overnight as well as during the day, and there has to be a long enough window for coats to cure before the next band of rain. In practice that puts most exterior painting between spring and early autumn, with the best conditions from May to September.

Cornish weather rarely behaves, so we plan exterior work with some slack in it and tell you if a wet week has pushed things back. Booking early in the year is the best way to get a spring or summer slot, because the season is short and it fills up.

The size of the house matters less than people expect. What moves an exterior quote is the condition of the surfaces, how much repair is needed, the type of finish (smooth render is quicker than pebbledash), the amount of painted timber, and access. A two-storey house with easy ground on all sides is one job; a terrace with a rear elevation that can only be reached through a neighbour's garden, or a three-storey gable that needs a tower or scaffold, is another.

We look at every exterior before quoting, walk round it with you, and point out anything that needs fixing before paint, such as failed pointing, leaking gutters or rotten sills. Those are worth sorting first, because paint over a leak is money wasted.