Exterior paint costs in Birmingham

Paint in Birmingham gets worked over from both ends of the year. Close to 57 inches of rain fall here in a normal year, and the same weather records count about 65 days at 90°F or more and roughly 47 freezing nights. Wood that gets painted before it has dried out after a rain tends to push the new coat off, so after a wet spell, a careful crew waits rather than starts.

The houses lean older. Close to half the area's housing, about 244,000 homes, dates from before 1980, nearly 79,000 of it from the 1970s alone. A house that age has likely been painted more than once, and scraping the loose layers back to sound paint is where a lot of the hours go.

If you live in one of the city's local historic districts, color can come up too. A district guideline quoted in the city's Design Review Committee minutes from 2020 says that when a building permit is needed, meaning work beyond routine maintenance, paint colors are reviewed with the construction plans, and the color has to suit the age and style of the house. In that case, the neighborhood's advisory committee split over a color scheme for a half-timbered house, with two members calling the colors current and trendy rather than right for its style.