What paint to paint a wooden house outside

A wooden house needs exterior decoration. This statement will be approved by every professional builder and owner of a wooden house. In addition to decorative functions, the decoration also performs protective - a house made of wood is subject to various dangers - moisture, sunlight, and biological pests.

To protect and decorate buildings from logs and beams, a lot of various materials have been created that are used almost equally widely and have found supporters, both among owners and among builders of wooden houses. In this article we will talk about paints, how to paint a wooden house outside and why paint is in many cases preferable to other materials.

Comparison of painting with other finishes

For analysis, we take the most popular materials and compare them according to the parameters most noticeable during operation. From the table you will see that paints for wooden facades are not a panacea for all occasions, but in many respects are better and more practical than, for example, siding or ventilated facades made of porcelain stoneware.

	Paint	Siding	Block house	Brick	Porcelain Tiles
Decorative properties	Perfectly preserves the texture and surface features of wood	Completely hides the base	High, imitates a rounded log	Completely covers the tree	Very decorative
Easy installation and application	Very easy to apply, only a brush or roller is needed	It is difficult to install, requires a special tool	Difficult installation	Sophisticated installation, concrete foundation required	Difficult installation
Cost	The cheapest finish	More expensive than any kind of paint	More expensive than siding	One of the most expensive	Not inferior to brick
Durability	6-10 years	20 years	10 and more years	50 years	50+ years
The ability to hide design flaws	Practically does not hide	Hides completely	Hides	Hides	Hides
Weather resistant	High, but depends on the choice of paint	High	High	The tallest	Not inferior to brick
Resistance to mechanical stress	Resistant only to occasional scratches and bumps.	Does not protect, may collapse even with a slight impact	Average	High	The most durable finish

It can be seen from the comparison that the most budget option is to paint the walls and other wooden elements of the facade. The mechanical and fire-fighting properties of paint are inferior, for example, to porcelain stoneware or brick, but for the money that was saved when buying material and paying for the work of professional builders, you can buy the most modern flame retardants that make wood absolutely non-combustible for several decades.

According to the results of a comparative analysis, you can make a choice in favor of paint. Now one more equally important decision should be made - what paint to paint the wooden house on the outside. Manufacturers produce dozens of varnish coatings intended for external woodwork, but only some of them can be suitable for a wooden house.

It depends on the:

• material of the house (beam, log, blockhouse, lining, chipboard, etc.);
• climate zone;
• type of previous decoration;
• budget.

As for paint manufacturers, it is best to focus on well-known brands - Tikkurila, Duf, Finnkolor, Beckers, any of the brands included in the Akzo Nobel concern. But you should buy them in large retail chains or well-known online stores.Unfortunately, there are a lot of fakes and frank hack on the market now, therefore, deciding to save a few rubles, you risk spoiling your house and incurring significant financial losses - the process of remodeling poor-quality painting is very laborious and expensive. What paint is better to paint a wooden house outside can be found on the manufacturers' official websites, if there is no paint offered to you there, then you should not buy it, even at the most attractive price.

What paints are used for exterior painting of a wooden house

Facade paints differ primarily in the composition of the film-forming components. And the type of solvent, the possibility of tinting and other parameters depend on them.

Antiseptics

Antiseptic impregnations are often used to treat the walls of a house. They can also be justifiably considered full-fledged paints. Antiseptics are glazing and covering. Glaze antiseptics create a transparent coating that emphasizes the texture and color of the wood.

Coating antiseptics create an opaque coating on the surface, but retain the relief of the wood.

Antiseptics are very convenient for covering facades from planed or polished wood of valuable varieties, which have their own pronounced pattern and beautiful texture. Antiseptics are good because they penetrate deep into the massif of the tree. The compositions dry very quickly and in most cases for complete protection it is enough to cover the wood with two layers of impregnation. But such processing can only be performed on a fresh tree that has not previously been painted.

Antiseptic treatment should be repeated once every 2 to 3 years. But there are expensive tools that can be updated every 5-6 years. As a rule, they belong to the category of azure or colored impregnation and, together with the protective, perform a decorative role. The composition of many impregnations includes substances that inhibit ultraviolet light, the tree after such processing does not darken and does not change color.

Acrylic or acrylate paints

The most fashionable and modern paints for exterior decoration of facades. Produced in the form of emulsions and dispersions, water-soluble. In most cases, the basis of such paints are acrylic resins or acrylic copolymers. Artificial or natural rubbers, antiseptics, and fungicides may be added to the components. They are sold in the form of a white or transparent base with varying degrees of gloss - matte, glossy, semi-gloss.

A number of pigments and dyes have been developed for acrylic paints, with which they can be tinted in any desired color and shade. Some dye catalogs include up to 20,000 color schemes. But when buying such a paint, it is advisable to choose a pigment from a fan of flowers of the same manufacturer. Most factories keep the chemical compositions of their paints secret, so various reactions between products of different brands are possible.

There will be no explosion, of course, but the paint will dry for too long, go bubble or burn out quickly and change color. To avoid such "surprises", it is better to buy the goods of one brand or check the paint and pigment for compatibility. Most major stores will tell you what to mix with. It’s best to directly tint the composition directly in the store, especially if it has a tinting machine and a color studio.

Acrylic paints:

• provide a wide range of colors;
• have excellent adhesion to wood;
• have no smell;
• absolutely safe in firefight;
• eco-friendly and non-allergenic.

But they have a significant drawback - they are quite expensive, at least significantly more expensive than alkyd and oil.

Alkyd paints

These are well-known compounds that have been used for painting wooden walls for many years.Created on the basis of polycondensation resins, united under the same name “alkyds”, paints are characterized by relatively low production costs, excellent coating ability, and high adhesion to wood. Moreover, you can paint as polished, planed or sawn wood, and logs, from which only the bark is removed.

Alkyd paints form a dense and durable highly elastic film that responds very well to temperature movements of wood and does not crack when dried, thermal expansion or other dimensional changes. When coating wood in two layers, the film becomes waterproof and slightly vapor permeable. Therefore, only dry wood is recommended to be painted with alkyd paints.

Some of the manufacturers include antiseptics and flame retardants in the composition of alkyd paints. Their presence must be found in the instructions for the paint before its use. If there are no such components, then the walls need to be further processed before painting. This slightly increases the cost of painting, but the life of the coating and the house as a whole increases several times.

Alkyd paints are usually available in a fixed range of colors, but changing the hue is quite simple - you need to mix two or more colors in a certain proportion so that the color changes in the right direction. The quality of the finish does not change. But, as is the case with acrylic, it is advisable to use only paints from the same manufacturer for mixing.

In recent years, the world's leading manufacturers have been offering colorless alkyd paints, which are tinted in the same way as acrylic. This is very convenient, especially when painting a new house, when the question is sharply, what is the best way to paint a wooden house outside, so that it stands out among the neighboring ones, even those built on the same project, which is often in cottage villages.

Alkyd paints are a full competitor in acrylic quality. They lose only in fire safety, and even then only during storage and work - rather strict rules of behavior with fire and heating devices are required here. But after drying, the paint layer becomes almost non-combustible. However, due to quick drying, the paint does not have time to deeply absorb into the tree, which negatively affects its durability. Alkyd paints have good frost resistance and can tolerate temperatures below - 30⁰FROM.

White spirit, solvent and similar weak organic solvents are solvents of paints on alkyd resins. They are moderately toxic and combustible, which also requires compliance with safety precautions when working. Although gasoline and kerosene also work well alkyd paints, but their use is undesirable - the color fades somewhat, and the gloss may change in the direction of increasing dullness.

Oil paints

For a long time, oil formulations, the diluent of which is drying oil or other natural oils, have been a serious competitor to alkyd. But in recent decades, they are being abandoned by an increasing number of manufacturers - paints are quite difficult to use, dry for a long time and the characteristics of the finish coating are inferior to most modern compositions.

Despite their shortcomings, these paints are the most budget option. After application to wood, the paint is well absorbed and creates a weathering resistant coating.

How to paint an old wooden house outside with old paint

There is only one recommendation - if the old layer holds well and is not covered with cracks and it does not show areas of film peeling, then you need to use the type of paint that was used previously. Alkyd can be confidently applied to oil paint - they blend well. But acrylic is not suitable here, although some manufacturers allow such contact.

In the event that you do not know what type of paint was previously used for painting the house, it can be determined by the appearance of the old coating.If the old coating has a leathery surface and grinds a little, it is most likely that the house was previously painted with acrylic paint. Acrylic paint cracks along the wood fibers.

If you can roll a small shred of paint into a tube, then most likely you are dealing with acrylic paint. If, when coagulating, a shred of paint cracks, then most likely it is oil paint. Oil paint forms a mesh crack during wear.

If the surface is covered with a glossy film of a glaze antiseptic, then the surface can be repainted with the same antiseptic or oil or alkyd paint. For repainting with acrylic paint, you will need to remove all the old antiseptic film to wood.

How to paint the walls of a new wooden house outside

Here, too, there are few recommendations - with acrylic or alkyd paint, if the tree is of ordinary species, glaze impregnation or azure, if the decoration is done with valuable wood with a good pattern. The primer is made only if it is provided by the manufacturer. In any case, you can paint the house outside only on a dry tree in warm weather, but not in direct sunlight. Any work on painting a wooden house should be done only when the wood is completely dry.