Outside painting should only be done in dry weather and after at least two days without rain, fog or frost. The ideal time is late summer when the wood has had a good time to dry out and the weather is usually quite settled. Even a small amount of moisture trapped under a new paint film will vaporise, causing blisters and peeling.

When To Paint And What To Paint First

For the same reason you should wait an hour after sunrise to let the dew dry out, and stop work an hour before sunset. On the other hand, don’t paint under the full glare of a hot sun as this will dry out the surface too quickly, leaving relatively soft paint underneath which may cause wrinkling as it dries in turn.

The ideal practice is to follow the sun, and only paint when it has dried one part of the house and passed on to another. Unfortunately this advice is often difficult to follow in practice as some walls may never see the sun, so you’ll have to look for the best compromise.

What to paint first

There is a logical sequence of painting which holds for nearly all houses. In general it’s best to start at the top and do larger areas before smaller ones. So if you’re going to paint the whole of your house try to follow this order:

do the fascia boards and barge boards first, followed by the gutters. The rendering (if any) comes next, then the windows and doors and finally the downpipes. The reason for doing it in this order is that splashes of paint dropped onto a wall beneath a fascia or gutter, even if wiped off immediately, will leave a mark; but subsequent painting of the wall will cover them up. Also, since windows and doors are smaller in area than the rendering, it will be easier to cut in’ (that is, leave a finer edge) when painting them, so giving a much neater finish.

You will need to follow this sequence three times in all, first to do the preparation, then to apply primers or under coats, and finally to paint on the top coat. If this sounds like far too much work to do all at once there’s no reason why you shouldn’t split it up and do just a part each year. You could, for instance, do the walls this year, the woodwork next year and the gutters and downpipes the year after.

It may even be better to do it this way, spread over several years, as you’ll be more aware of the condition of the paintwork and will be able to touch up bits and make small repairs as you go along, when the first signs of wear show. (But remember that this will restrict you to using the same color as you have at present. It’s going to look odd if you change the color only gradually).