Painting A House Foundation – Is It Worth The Time And Effort?

Instead, ours looks like a complete mess, like it has been completely forgotten or ignored.

I think it would look so much better if it were all given a coat (or two) of paint. It would give the house a much more finished look. I did a quick mockup of the side door area with a dark gray foundation. I have no idea if this is the color I’d actually use, but I was thinking it would look nice in a color that’s just a few shades darker than the color of the siding.

I think one reason we have so much trouble with dirt sticking to the foundation like it does is because that’s just bare concrete. It’s rough and porous, so the dirt really grabs on. It’s really unsightly. And I know a lot of this problem will be eliminated once I get some planting beds topped with mulch around the foundation so that it’s not just bare dirt, but I don’t think that mulch will eliminate the problem completely.

Not only would paint give it a more finished look, but it would also create a finish that dirt won’t stick to quite as easily as it does to bare concrete. Again, I’m not sure what color I would choose, so this probably isn’t what it would actually look like. You just have to imagine that the color is actually a few shades darker than the paint color on the stone and siding.

The color of the siding and stone is Sherwin Williams Mindful Gray (SW 7016). On the website, that looks like this…

So three shades darker is called Dovetail (SW 7018)…

Four shades darker is this color called Gauntlet Gray (SW 7019)…

And five shades darker is this color called Black Fox (SW 7020)…

I think once the foundation is pressure washed and dry, the painting would go fairly quickly. There’s a lot of width that needs to be painted, but I don’t think any of it is more than 12 inches high. And I could always do it in two stages, tackling the front and visible sides of the house first, and then concentrating on the back of the house at a later date when I begin working on backyard projects. For now, I’d want to do the area in front of the bedroom and closet (i.e., the really dirty areas in the photo above in this post) plus the area under the living room windows, the breakfast room windows, and around my studio on the front and side (shown by the white line in the photo below).