Painted Ladies: Why were Victorian homes painted in so many colors?
*This will be a part of a three part series on American victorian architecture and an economic and political history of what is shaping housing. This will be part 3 that focuses on the history of exterior paints. To view part 1 click here.
When looking up at a towering Queen Anne or Italianate at the corbels, cupolas, and widow’s walks you may often ask yourself how on earth did victorian people paint their homes in the way they did without modern technology? One of the most stunning aspect about victorian architecture can be the way they are painted. You walk down the streets of Alamo Square in San Francisco, and you ask how does the home owner maintain all of that work? Especially for the fact that victorian homes were painted in multiple color schemes with a badger hair brush. After all it’s hard to believe but the invention of the paint roller did not come around until late 1940 by Sherwin Williams. Why exactly did we switch from badger hair to foam rollers though. Does anyone ask that question?
This will be the last of my three part series on victorian architecture, and this time I am going to talk about the theme of color. There is one thing we too often take for granted in life and that is the color around us. Color on buildings have always intrigued me so very much. Ask yourself this. Do you ever take a walk down the street or go for a drive on Sunday and observe the color that you see around you? The color on the shutters, siding, roofing, and windows. As someone who is extremely passionate about historic architecture, it always intrigued me to understand how and why colors have changed on buildings on both the interior and exterior over the last century. In the first article in the series I really covered over the interior and structure of victorian architecture to examine why it’s disappearing, but for this article I want to focus on the exterior design that we can see around use. There is actually a very real phenomena we are witnessing to explain why colors have changed, and it has more so to do with both politics and economics and not so much to do with personal taste or style that was chosen by someone. This is an interesting debate and universe to talk about so let’s jump right in.
Often times when a buyer is touring a home that sparks their interest, one of the first questions asked isn’t usually why is the color painted that way? Who chose those colors, and why does this look the way it does? In fact many home owners are told not to buy a home based on the color that it is painted, because we are told it can always be repainted. In reality it’s no so much what we are looking at, but the series of random events that led previous home owners to the decision to pick a certain color or use a certain material is what has fascinated me so much. Often times there is a very real reason and sometimes it may not be a good one. I finally decided to do some research and go on an investigation to find out what is causing this very real shift of culture by talking to professional historians in the field. In order to understand what has changed we have to focus on the theory of politics and law and construction practices. First we have to form our opinion based on an understanding that colors inside and outside of homes in architecture used to be much darker and there is a very good reason for that.
You often hear the phrase, they don’t make paint like they used to. It peels, it cracks, it fades, and it just doesn’t hold up like the “old days”. Is there any truth to that and where do we need to look to find more information? First we have to ask ourselves, what about the exterior of homes looks different today? If you said color then you would be correct. Victorian period architecture and the way it was built out, was really made for multiple color pallets. Usually this involved a body color, trim color, an accent color, and sometimes a bonus color. Many of the homes during that time were darker tones, not primary or even secondary colors. They were tertiary colors or what we call muddied colors. By muddied we think of any color that you add brown to and because we’re really talking about earth pigments made from clay. So yellow becomes mustard, red becomes clay, and green becomes sage. We were able to use such abstract and deeper colors because they did not fade over time. Out in the country away from the rail line most houses were white. Closer to the city, where everything was heated and run by coal, white houses would be white only a few weeks. Part of using many colors other than white was to hide all the soot and keep them semi-presentable in between scrubbings. People have no idea of what inner cities were like back in those days. They think that everything was always clean…. All the old buildings close to the city made of pink granite and light grey sandstone were completely black.
We have to remember that on homes up until really the 1970s were painted with oil paints, and during the victorian age you would have had leaded linseed oil paints. To explain this further we have to understand the process of applying oil paints and the nature of materials you are painting over. The way oil paint works is that it does not build up in layers like the modern paints we use today. Oil paint always blends into the previous layer when it comes to wood, which is why linseed oil paints can only be painted over raw wood. Plastic paints for example are viewed as being more versatile because they can be painted over anything, but just because they can be painted over anything does not mean they perform the best when it comes to bonding to surfaces. You can showcase this by trying to paint latex paints over oil paint without sanding, but do the exact opposite and oil paint would adhere to latex with no apparent problem. For this reason oil paints and especially over wood hold up much longer and do not resort to cracking or peeling. It’s the nature of oil based structures that are completely different from the paints we are using today that brought out the colors that were once possible in these homes.
Now we should not leave out that water and plastic based outdoor paints have come a long way since their inception, but again that is in regards to unpainted surfaces. The switch over to plastic paints to replace the old fashioned oil paints was the first mistake. In the year 1978 it would be President Jimmy Carter who banned the use of lead in consumer paints sold in department stores, and put together a project with the EPA that would now include the requirement to get homes tested for lead before they could be sold. It was in an act to clean up our cities and our gasoline. The plastic industry jumped to the occasion and started formulating new products and they sold it in stores as “latex paints”. I put that in quotes because that term is akin using the term “Kleenex”. It means absolutely nothing but a marketing term that was used to sell product. We have to understand how a paint structure works. All paints must contain a binder that is the glue that holds the pigments together. That binder can either be a synthetic or natural resin. It can be acrylics, alkyds, vinyl-acrylics, vinyl acetate/ethylene (VAE), polyurethanes, polyesters, melamine resins, epoxy, and oils. Essentially we can separate the two categories into plastics and oils. The problem is plastic polymers are significantly more expensive and complicated to produce than oil paints, and so to reduce costs the industry came up with a clever idea.
“The problem with lead paint is not so much the price of a doctor to detoxify, but life within the poison tainted tenement. The health problem among urban slums and rural shacks is not just a lack of nearby doctors to treat the preventable diseases which fester there, but the environment in which people live in.” — President Jimmy Carter (‘78)
Heading into the 1940s during WWII, American chemists in the industry discovered that you can reduce the amount of actual metallic pigment and binder that’s used in a formula by simply mixing liquids into it and watering it down. The largest myth is the industry did this because they cared about the environment, but that can’t be true when you realize that these new lines of acrylic paints produced far more VOC’s than linseed paints even with dreaded lead. It’s similar to the dairy industry adding water to milk and still labeling and selling it as milk in grocery stores, or a bottle of olive oil that is actually mostly a bottle of canola oil. Sherwin-Williams successfully marketed the first waterborne formula they called their Kem-Tone line, with the added benefit they said of having twice the wall coverage since it was easier to spread. They sold a new line of roller to go along with it. At that time period no one asked whether less pigment and binder meant less durable, but they saw the new benefit of plastic paint that could be rubbed with your finger and cleaned. No longer did it pose a danger which made it widely popular for interiors.
In 1921 the National Lead Company admitted that lead is poison, and in that same year the League Of Nations banned white leaded oil paints. Overnight public pressure from consumers led to paint manufactures to start devising alternatives to the lead used in their paints. As the industry shifted from lead to titanium dioxide for whites, white paint was seen as a means to cover up old leaded paint on victorians so that housing could pass inspection. It began to be marketed as all the rage at South Side of Chicago’s “White City" in the form of an amusement park that ran for 50 years where the beauty and elegance of white homes and buildings could be seen for miles. At this time period the number of pigments available in a latex binder were limited, so homes began to adopt a monotone appearance to reduce costs and especially since we now needed precious metals like lead for the war. The painted ladies in San Francisco for example adopted a grayscale solid white or solid battle ship grey from the 1930s to really the 1980s. If you look at any photograph from the Summer Of Love era of American culture for example you will see most of the homes painted gray or white, and this was a reaction to covering up lead paint in cities with titanium dioxide and also so the industry could save costs and utilize metallics for wartime resources. Part of the movement of the Seven Sisters was bringing back color that was taken away.
Any home in America that was built before the 1940s was originally painted with oil paint and mostly with lead, so when millions of Americans requested painters to cover over peeling lead with latex it led to all sorts of problems down the road. We really opened up an entire new industry of the yearly house scraping and the yearly paint job that would now be required. The painters and the paint industry themselves got a lot of new business and customers, because now homes that had white or tan plastic paints covering homes would often have peeling problems after every cold winter as the new waterborne mixes just wouldn’t bond into the next layer of paint. Does anyone remember the science experiments of your youth in grade school when you tried to mix oil and vinegar or water, and no matter how many times you tried you just couldn’t? The reality is you can’t. If you don’t use some kind of adhesion promoter latex based paint can easily be peeled off oil paint with the flick of your nails. When lead paint was banned for consumers and the industry started phasing out the use of oil based paints, it left many home owners in the dust and with no pun intended. It led to many of the paint problems that is still haunting us to this day on older homes, and often this is covered up until the new unsuspecting buyer finds what’s hidden underneath.
Now how does this relate to architecture in particular? The architecture that was designed and built during the victorian era was made for multiple color schemes and to bring out bold patterns and abstract tones. Very rarely were Queen Annes for example painted a monotone or white, and some examples would be when the neighborhood did not live near rail service and colors were hard to get such as deep into the country where you would find farm houses. Otherwise the owners of these elaborate homes went to the complete effort of complete customization that was used to highlight a monstrosity of detail and gaudy elegance. You wouldn’t go to all that work if you were repainting your home every year would you, or every four years for that matter? Now we have to take a trip to the museum of fine arts in Boston or maybe New York City, pick any city you like but take a look at the old oil painting. The nature of an oil painting is that as the metallics like lead oxidized, instead of fading it had the opposite problem. Linseed has been known to last decades upon decades while retaining its color, and that is because oil base will darken with age as the metallic oxides. Linseed paint jobs were meant to last the lifetime of the owners, because with the nature of oil paints it could always be melted back into the next layer. As it aged you would just rub on a coat of clear linseed oil and you extend the life of the paint film that prevents it from changing color from the sun or peeling.
“Unless you have the pigments scientifically analyzed the eye match will be wrong as some paint of this period will darken with age. The metallic oxides especially. I was a very good friend of the daughter of the woman who came up with the Williamsburg colors for Rockefeller. When we visited there with my friend she was amazed at what the colors really were upon mass spectrometer finding.” — Jerry Grulkey (Consultant on Painted Ladies Book)
Also we must realize it is the linseed that darkens with age. A lot of oil paints made today in an effort to phase out leaded linseed and reduce costs on metallics are made with petroleum products and soy oil. It is made of these ingredients because they are cheap, not for longevity or durability. Latex is now generally better than alkyd but linseed still rules. In comparison I spoke with Jim Siegel out of San Francisco who is the owner of James Siegel Victorian Restorations and Distractions Souvenir Shop in the Haight-Ashbury District, where he involves himself on revitalizing projects throughout the West Coast. Jim is currently the owner of five victorian properties and some of which he rents out. Being in California he paints his buildings with latex paints, and the ones that face South towards the sun can’t keep their colors.
“It is starting to look a bit faded after just six years. Both buildings face South so the paint faded quickly. I use latex and buy it from Sherwin Williams. It is hard to find oil based paint in California.” — James Siegel
In recent decades most counties in California have outright placed bans on the sale of oil based paint products at department stores. These bans include Sonoma, San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Monterey counties. To make things easier companies have outright chosen to stop selling oil paints all together across entire states. After we discovered that ever growing hole in our ozone layer, environmental activists began pushing state and federal legislators to act on regulating paint products for the emissions they released into our atmosphere. In 1998 the EPA mandated under the Clean Air Act that all paints sold in the United States to consumers had to be reformulated to limit the amount of VOC’s released which even included exterior paints. In 2015 regulations restricting the ingredients in architectural coatings took effect in eight states. The push to reduce VOC’s in our atmosphere worked, and between 1970 and 2003 the VOC emissions from man-made sources nationwide declined by 54 percent. As good as the new restrictions may have been for saving the planet, it may have unfairly discriminated against victorian architecture and styling because it fails to point out that not all oil paints or VOC’s are the same. Perhaps you could make the same argument about smoking a cigar from a cigarette, but all tobacco products are grouped together. The same goes for the paints that are sold in stores. Oil paints and finishes such linseed, tung, and shellac can produce their own VOC’s if you decide to mix them with a grain or corn alcohol or spirits, which does require ventilation but is absolutely not toxic to humans. Obviously when painting outdoors that is not an issue. Oil paints don’t have to be toxic.
For this reason it has become increasingly difficult to source oil based paints, and often times they have to be purchased outside of the country for the “good stuff” or you have to make your own. This makes it extremely costly, and most painters or contractors will refuse to work with it. One example where you can still find homes being painted with oil paints is in Nordic countries like Sweden because of their harsher and colder climate. Pure linseed oil paint is not sensitive to freezing or to very hot weather, meaning the paint can be stored below freezing, and it can be applied in direct sunlight. One of the remaining Swedish companies in particular that still produces and sells worldwide you may have heard of before is the infamous Allbäck line of paints. You can find their paint on the Palace of Versailles in France, Holkham Estate in England, and Parliament Hill in Canada. Another company that sells them worldwide you can find is the Viking linseed brand which also ships from Sweden. Not including shipping the price tag is often four times as expensive, in some pigments reaching close to $200 for one gallon. They are often times used on high rise hard to reach structures where you don’t want to have to paint again. The reason is that unlike waterborne paints the linseed can be driven into the wood by warming it with an infrared heat lamp. This makes it perfect for victorian architecture in their nature that is often a large chore and twice as complicated to paint, and especially if you are doing your home in a multiple color scheme you don’t want it to fade or peel. It simply makes sense and it is too bad that you won’t find oil paints like this at your local Home Depot or Lowes anymore. This goes for stains as well. Ask any furniture maker how hard it is to locate 190 proof alcohol to make shellac.
Out in the battlefield there are a few Americans around the country who are dedicated to preserving the original colors and qualities of oil based earth tones that were once used and found on victorian homes. One of those folks is Steven Phillips, an Historic Color Consultant out of Upstate New York in the city of Oswego. Together with his wife in the year 2015 they started a neighborhood revitalization organization called the Paint Oswego Program, creating 250 possible combinations separated into four historic periods from 1800–1940 of their area. They have since leveraged almost $3 million in private investment for neighborhoods throughout their city. His home had been a Fraternity House for 50+ years and was condemned when they bought it and bought it back to life.
Paint Oswego Color Palette Book
“Painting one’s home in a historic color scheme can often be intimidating. Choosing how colors work together can be difficult to do. This is why so often homeowners default to a simple white color scheme. It is safe but not particularly inspirational. We were asked if we wanted our house to “whisper”, “talk” or “shout”. We chose talk.” —Steven Phillips (Oswego, NY)
The above colors are Rockwood Jade, Raycroft Copper Red, Mesa Tan, and Toasted Pine Nut. You can really see how much of a difference it really makes on highlighting the architecture and what the original designers were going for when they chose paint schemes. This is the original paint scheme of the home. This home here is the perfect example of a matching combination. These are victorian period colors that blend nicely. The problem with bright primary colors in a lot of the modern paints we use today is they don’t mix or blend mix nicely with each other. They can be very overpowering. The muted and darker tones that made up linseed paints don’t take away from the architecture and you can pile on multiple colors. They blend together extremely well as if they were always meant to be there. That is very hard to get right. It really does take some research to pull off correctly. The fun part really comes down to finding out that you may have to paint it yourself. Owners of these older properties across the country are sometimes quickly finding out that finding a paint crew that will take on the challenge and height of accomplishing a five or six color palette design with linseed oil paints are few and far between. Many owners are opting to do the work entirely themselves, often renting scaffolding, bucket lifts, tall ladders and taking on the challenge when no one else wants to do the work it takes. It can truly be a labor of love, and it showcases how much work and dedication can go into bringing these ladies back to life. There is almost no end in sight for how far you can take it, and there are some that go to extremes.
“We did ours ourselves. Six colors. We rented a bucket lift for the upper floors. It took us 2 years to paint ours. You can rent the extra-long ladders, if you are okay with the height.” — Kathy Dahlstrand (Harrisburg, PA)
“Almost done with the exterior painting of our 1855 Italianate and I just had to show the picture off!” — Lisa White (New Bedford, MA)
“My father and I painted this the first time. 38 gallons of oil paint. I did the second floor. When he put it out for bid the next time he did get a few NO THANKS!” — Steve Archambault (Westfield, NJ)
“I am thankful for a friend who owns a lift and let me borrow it. We painted this house 19 years ago with scaffolding so I am so thankful to get the lift this time around.” — Curt Simmons (Saint Jo, TX)
“We are hand painting everything. It goes on thicker and more even than the paint sprayer. Not to mention with all the detail it will take smaller brushes. It’s definitely going to take a while but in the end its worth it!” — Niki Mendoza (Port Byron, IL)
Victorian home owners across the country are really pulling up their sleeves and climbing tall heights to bring the character back to homes which had been washed away from monoculture. It begs the question though many in the environmental community shaping new laws are asking, is there a signifiant amount of emissions being released from the number of Americans painting more than one color on the exteriors of their victorians? A better question you could ask, would you feel comfortable letting a child drink from a can of latex paint or chew plastic paint chips because it’s a lead free? I can understand how the movement away from oil paints and lead based products may be great for the interior although that is another discussion, when it comes to exterior there really is no risk for exposure unless you went around licking the outside of your home. If you have lead paint or stain that has been sealed it doesn’t pose a danger. They warn about lead in the event you would be cutting or sanding indoors. However the removal of lead from oil paints have almost made them less practical in nature. We can bring up a common problem with linseed oils on the market today, that is linseed varieties today where you can find them are notorious for fungus and mold growth down the road. Lead as a metallic naturally had antibacterial and anti fungal properties, so it was once used in paints almost as a form of preservative. It resists moisture in paints that utilize metallics. Lead white pigment has been shown to protect linseed oil from oxidation under UV radiation so it overall allowed oil paints to hold up much longer. Luckily a lot have been researching on adding white zinc powder to their paints as an alternative to what lead could once do for oil based pigments.
A greater tragedy as we witnessed the movement away from more durable paints that lasted much longer, may have been that we opened the market towards the new world of replacement siding. Replacement siding such as asbestos, aluminum, and now predominantly vinyl blew up in popularity around the same time period that Americans started getting hooked on plastic. Plastic in paints but also now in siding was viewed as the miracle that would solve all of life’s blunders. Today, we are all exposed to a flood of mailings and advertisements from contractors telling us how great our home will look with their premium vinyl siding. Plastic never rots, it never has to be painted, and it is significantly cheaper to install than solid cedar clapboard and shingles. However we have to remember, part of the original push away from painted surfaces was to cover up old leaded paint surfaces so that your property could pass inspection when you wanted to put it up for sale. Slapping on new siding over the original clapboard or shingles contaminated with remnants of lead was a means to get that job done cheaply and efficiently. Much to the horror of unsuspecting future buyers that are looking for an historic home, it often leads to a large surprise when the plastic coverup is removed to the tune of exposing hidden rot and damage to the structure. No matter what anyone may say, it is simply wrong to believe that you can nail plastic over 150 year old wood and not expect problems down the road.
Old House Guy: Vinyl vs Wood Siding Your House
“Vinyl siding creates a very different play of light and shadow on the wall surface, thus resulting in a different character. The width of the clapboards is altered, shadow reveals are reduced, and molding or trim is changed or removed in certain areas. Because this siding is usually added on top of existing siding, details around windows and doors may appear set back from the siding rather than slightly projecting. Changes to character-defining features of a building such as this always have an impact on more than just that building; they also alter the historic visual relationship between the buildings in the neighborhood. Once this siding is placed on a number of buildings, the historical character of the entire district may be seriously damaged. ” — Sally Jewell (Secretary Of Interior)
Not to mention the ultimate factor about plastic is that it fades in the sun, and unlike wood it can’t be painted over with anything that will hold up. As far as environmental and safety concerns, using up our forests is bad but could plastic be in fact worse for our landfills? According to the National Fire Prevention Association, vinyl and aluminum siding create a fire hazard by keeping fire inside your house, intensifying the heat. It also creates serious problems for firefighters because it makes it difficult to locate the source of a wall fire. When vinyl siding burns it releases toxic gasses and creates acidic smoke. The acidic smoke is so strong it can kill a person inside the house before the flames or carbon monoxide. It’s safe to say that with any product you use there will be precautions you should take so common sense prevails.
It’s important that we take a step back and consider what this all means. Our environment and landscape is changing at a rapid pace and in particular an example we can use is the color around us that we too often take for granted. Perhaps it could be used to help society. It has been shown that pastel colors in our environment decrease depression rates. Maybe the better question to ask would be, why does modern society trends discourage expressing yourself and being bold when it comes to architecture? This marks the end of my three part series on victorian architecture. The questions we should be asking are, what can we do to reverse the trend? Are we going in the right direction when it comes to housing? Is there anything you personally can do in your local community to make a difference? I believe victorian architecture and charm across American culture has been dying a slow death since the 1960s, but in recent decades they are getting demolished at alarming rates. The arguments you hear such as we need the space for housing, that older homes are too expensive because they are not energy efficient or bad for the environment because of how much lumber it would take to build or repair them, or that older homes have hidden toxins in them that are dangerous for your health are simply not true. If you have free time, volunteer for your local historic committee or society. Voice your concern about saving a home that you deeply care about. It’s going to take a grassroots effort to get society to change the way we think about preserving our American history in the same way we cherish the Roman Colosseum or Eiffel Tower. Consider buying an older home yourself and saving it from the wrecking ball. I feel like it’s a part of America that is worth preserving for future generations to see.
Before I leave you now, if anyone would like to see more paint references, these are three of my favorites from the internet archives collection. The first is from 1898 by the John Lucas Paint Company. Curiously they used house planbook designs from R.W. Shoppell. The second is from Harrison Bros. Paints from 1884 but it regrettably has a strong yellow bias from the scan. Last is from the Seeley Bros. in 1885. I hope you all enjoy them. Another resource I can recommend is the Roger Moss book series published throughout the 1980’s such as Century of Color: Exterior Decoration for American Buildings. You can find a treasure trove of information and new inspiration just by spending the day at your local library.
*This will be a part of a three part series on American victorian architecture and an economic and political history of what is shaping housing. This will be part 3 that focuses on the history of exterior paints. To view part 1 click here.
