Can Vinyl Shutters Be Painted?

Today’s homeowners often choose vinyl shutters over wood shutters because of their durability, lower costs, easier installation and choice of style. However, after a couple of years the color of the vinyl shutters may not be what you desire. So the question arises – can vinyl shuttersPainting Vinyl Shutters be painted?

Vinyl Shutters Can be Painted:

With the advent of modern painting technology, vinyl shutters can be painted. Usually, the vinyl shutters hold paint very well. You may have some vinyl shutters where the paint weathered to the point of peeling off the whole shutter in many tiny pieces. The only solution in such case is to sand the old paint off as much as you can with very coarse sandpaper and repaint the shutters. The shutters will surely hold the new coat of paint very well for the years to come.

Paintable Shutters:

You may find some shutters sold in the market as “paintable”. Generally, the colored vinyl shutters are not recommended to paint. You can also find vinyl shutters in the market that have a baked on acrylic paint which is re-paintable whenever required. Nevertheless, when you are going to buy new vinyl shutters, make sure you buy the paintable type just to be sure that you can repaint the same when needed. You can also hire a professional painting contractor if you want to paint the vinyl shutters and change the color or revamp the look. Although there is no guarantee that every vinyl surface will hold paint but the shutters most likely can be painted.

Cleaning Vinyl Shutters:

It important to clean the surface before you apply paint of your old vinyl shutters. Cleaning the vinyl shutters by hand is very much important. Under any circumstances, you should not think that power washing the vinyl is the best way to clean the surface.

Use Special Paints:

When it comes to painting vinyl shutters, you need to use paint that has urethane resin as the main ingredient. Urethanes are actually very sticky and once they dry, the bond well to anything. Most professional painters use this type of urethane based paints to apply on vinyl shutters since they won’t peel from the vinyl surface. But you need to follow the manufacturer’s directions and choose the paint color that is nearly identical to the original vinyl color. Usually, the painting manufacturers don’t recommend homeowners to paint their light colored vinyl with a dark color, since this can cause excessive heat buildup in the vinyl which can actually lead to massive expansion and contraction of the vinyl.

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