Repainting or Restaining Shutters Without Replacing Them

You're repainting the trim, or the walls, and now the shutters look a shade off. Before you price out a whole new set, it's worth knowing that a refinish is sometimes enough, and sometimes it isn't.

Start With What the Shutters Are Made Of

Everything else follows from the material. Hardwood shutters have a painted or stained finish over real wood, and wood takes a new finish well when it's cleaned and sanded first. Composite shutters, built on an engineered core, and vinyl or PVC shutters are smoother and harder. Paint doesn't grip them as easily.

Our post on poly versus wood shutters explains how each is built. If you don't know what you have, look at the edge of a panel or ask whoever installed them.

Painted Wood Shutters: Usually a Good Candidate

A painted hardwood shutter that is still straight and tight can usually be repainted. The steps are the same ones any careful painter follows. Clean off grease and dust. Scuff the old finish so new paint can grip. Fill small dents and sand them smooth. Prime, then apply thin coats of a durable paint in satin or semi-gloss.

Two details help. Use a bonding or stain-blocking primer if the shutters are a different colour from the one you want, and use an oil-based primer under an oil-based topcoat. And take the panels down if you can, numbering each one so it goes back where it came from.

Stained Wood: Dark to Light Is the Hard Direction

Stain soaks into wood. You can darken a stained shutter fairly easily, because the new stain sits over the old. Going lighter is a different job, since the old colour is in the grain. That usually means stripping or heavy sanding, and the louvers are slow to work on.

Painting over stain is simpler than lightening it. If you want white shutters where you now have walnut tones, painting is the realistic route, and a stain-blocking primer keeps the wood's natural tannins from bleeding through the white.

Poly, Composite and Vinyl: Check First

These shutters can often take paint, but only with the right bonding primer, and the factory finish may be part of what the warranty covers. Painting them yourself could affect that coverage. Before you open a can, ask the maker or the company that installed them whether a repaint is okay and what they'd use.

Poly is also chosen because it holds up in damp rooms and sun. A coat of paint that peels in a bathroom is worse than the colour you started with.

The Louver Problem

Louvers are where most repaints go wrong. Paint collects in the gap between the louver and the frame, and when it dries the two are stuck together. Thick coats also run and sag on the angled slats.

Thin coats fix most of it. Tilt the louvers while you paint, then move them to the opposite angle every few minutes as the paint sets, so nothing bonds. A small angled brush gets into the slats, and a sprayer gives the smoothest result if you're set up for it. Let each coat dry fully before you close the shutters.

When a Repaint Won't Fix It

Paint changes colour. It doesn't straighten a bowed panel, tighten a loose hinge or close a split in a stile. If panels rub, louvers won't hold their angle or joints have opened up, you have a repair question. Our guide to repairing or replacing shutters and shades covers how to tell.

The other case is a colour change that doesn't match the trim. If you're choosing a new white, matching a shutter white to your trim is worth a read first, because whites differ more than people expect.

How to Decide

Repaint if the shutters are sound wood in a finish you can cover. Think twice if they're factory-finished poly, if you want to go lighter than a dark stain, or if the panels already have problems. In those cases new custom shutters in the right colour from the start can be the cleaner answer.

Sheila will tell you honestly which side of that line your shutters fall on. She looks at them in your light during a free in-home consultation, and she doesn't push a replacement when a refinish will do. Start with our custom plantation shutters page or request a consultation.