House Painting in Wellington, Done Like Our Own

Khai Do started painting houses in Wellington in 2008. Since then he's worked in most suburbs you can name — Miramar, Karori, Island Bay, Lyall Bay, Khandallah — and the thing that keeps coming up is how different each part of the city really is. Coastal homes in Miramar and Island Bay face constant salt spray off the strait. Lyall Bay properties cop the southerly in winter with nowhere for wind to break. Karori sits in more sheltered valleys but catches the UV hard on its north-facing walls. None of that is theory. It's what we've learned by doing the work, year after year, in the actual conditions. Most Wellington homeowners call us house painters; some say home painters, or just decorators. The label matters less to us than whether the preparation was done properly before a brush touched the wall.

Wellington's weather genuinely changes what house painting requires. You need products formulated for coastal exposure, matched to the substrate and the specific aspect of the house. Generic "exterior paint" off the shelf doesn't cut it here. We use Resene Sonyx 101 and Dulux Weathershield on exteriors where water shedding is critical; Resene Lumbersider on timber weatherboards where flexibility through temperature swings matters; Resene Quick Dry primer on bare timber before topcoating, so we're not relying on the topcoat to do a job it wasn't designed for. These are choices that come from experience, not guesswork.

One honest thing we'll tell you: we won't start exterior topcoats if rain is forecast within 24 hours. That sometimes pushes a job out by a day or two, and yes, it can be frustrating for everyone involved. But we've seen what happens when painters rush for the sake of a schedule — moisture trapped under paint that blisters within a year, sometimes sooner. A proper exterior repaint on a Wellington home should last 7 to 10 years. A shortcut repaint can cost you more within three.

Connaght Terrace is a good example of a typical Wellington exterior. Coastal weatherboard home, south-facing sections taking the brunt of southerly winds and salt spray off the harbour. When we inspected it, three sections of the weatherboards had early-stage rot — the kind you can still stabilise if you catch it before it spreads. We treated those areas with a penetrating timber stabiliser, then sealed all gaps with a flexible polyurethane sealant before water blasting the rest of the house. Bare timber got two coats of Resene Quick Dry primer before anything else went on. Topcoat was Resene Sonyx 101 in semi-gloss across the body — it sheds water well and the sheen helps it weather without chalking. Trim and bargeboards were picked out by brush for crisp lines; we don't rely on masking tape alone for that detail. Proper flash-off between coats, no shortcuts on drying time.

That's the level of work every Wellington Decorators exterior gets. Our house painters hold to that standard not because it's a particularly large job, but because it's the minimum that actually gives Wellington homeowners a finish that lasts. See more of our completed projects at our projects gallery.