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lilylchen

Painting vinyl windows??

lilylchen
10 years ago

I just saw this on HGTV Curb Appeal where they said they wouldnt replace the white vinyl windows because of budget, but were going to install screens with grills. In the show, the new screens were white, and definitely the frames of the windows were white (including the vertical pieces [like at 20% and 80% of the horizontal run]). In the final reveal, these are all brown. What?!? I thought you couldnt paint these pieces. Or did they just paint it for the show, but it's going to look like crap in 3 months when the weather gets to it?
I couldnt find a before, but here's the after. The window is the main one on the right.

Comments (5)

  • MelanieSmooter
    10 years ago

    I think you can successfully paint vinyl - you can get exterior paint to paint vinyl siding, so why not the windows?

    Sherwin Williams SuperPaint is a good one for vinyl...You just need to make sure you prep everything really good.

  • lilylchen
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Really? So why dont more people paint their windows?!? The ones everyone uses are a cool white, but all the popular paint schemes are warm. Painting them a warm color would make a world of difference!

  • abeg
    10 years ago

    You can absolutely paint vinyl windows. It's hard to change conventional wisdom. PVC has a distortion temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit. The paint has to have reflective pigments to reflect the infrared solar radiation from the sun. You can paint your windows dark colors as long as you consider this detail.

  • paintguy22
    10 years ago

    Two reasons not to paint your vinyl that I can think of: one, you are taking a maintenance free item and turning it into something you need to maintain. Second, painting vinyl is hard...because of the nature of the surface, it's easy to put brush marks all over it and make it look like crap if you don't know what you are doing. Also, yes it's true for any of those home improvement shows that they make the transformations look easy but will look like crap in a few months because of all the steps they skipped. If you want to learn to do things the 'right way' you will not learn that from watching those shows, especially when it comes to painting.

  • CristyRobbins
    10 years ago

    Well, you can apply paint over vinyl but it doesn't mean it will stick to it. The material vinyl is made of doesn't really let paint adhere that well. But before thinking about painting vinyl windows you should know first that vinyl windows can possibly turn yellow over time and ones made of crappy material turn yellow quickly. Value Windows and Doors has an article about vinyl windows turning yellow.