Guide · South Florida
Three things work on a South Florida wall at once, and each leaves a different mark. Learn to tell them apart and you can read your own house, judge a bid honestly, and stop paying twice for the same repair.
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Three attackers, one wall
People here talk about "the weather" as one thing. For a coating it is three separate attacks arriving together, and each one leaves a different signature. Once you can tell them apart you can read your own house, and you stop being talked into the wrong fix.
Breaks down the binder holding the pigment. It shows up as chalk, a powder that comes off on your hand, and as colour loss on the south and west elevations while the north side still looks fine. Deep and saturated colours give up first.
Works from behind. Stucco that never fully dries pushes vapour outward, and a film that cannot breathe lifts off in blisters with clean, bare substrate underneath. Blistering is a moisture story almost every time, not a paint-quality story.
Carries inland far past the beach and settles as a film. On the wall it degrades the coating from the surface down. At any steel fixing it starts corrosion inside the joint, which then bleeds a brown stain through anything painted over it.
Two of the three arrive whether you are on the water or not. That is why an interior wall in a house ten kilometres inland can outlast the exterior of the same house by a decade.
What our crews do before opening a can
A fast exterior looks excellent in a photograph and tired in a season. The gap between the two is entirely in the hours before the first coat, and those hours are exactly what gets cut when a crew is behind schedule or a bid was too thin to carry them.
The order does not change: wash, let it dry, scrape what is loose, repair what is broken, replace the caulk, prime the repairs, then coat. The step that gets skipped most often is the second one, because drying is the only part of the sequence where nobody appears to be working. Coat a wall that is still holding water and you have built the next failure into the finish.
The other quiet decision is the material. Builder-grade paint is not a cheaper version of the same thing; it chalks out after two Florida summers. Our crews buy exterior lines rated for this sun and this salt, which is also why they hold supplier accounts rather than picking up whatever is on the shelf.
In order, and none of it optional
Read your own house
Powder on your palm after touching the wall. Ultraviolet has eaten the binder. It has to be washed off completely, because coating over chalk means the new film is gripping dust.
Bubbles that reveal bare substrate when opened. Moisture pushing out from behind. Find the source, which is usually irrigation, a failed seal or a leak, before repainting anything.
Lifting along a window edge or a trim line rather than in the open field. The seal there has failed and water is travelling behind the film. Replacing that bead is the repair; recoating the face is not.
Old layers that have lost flexibility and can no longer move with the substrate. Nothing bonds to it. That area gets taken back rather than covered, which is why an inspection by hand beats one from the kerb.
Rust bleeding out of a railing post, bracket or fastener. The metal has to be treated. Paint over the streak and it returns with the next rain, looking exactly the same.
Normal, not defective. South and west take years more ultraviolet than north. It is the argument for repainting whole elevations rather than patching a section and hoping it blends.
Timing
Roughly November through April gives lower humidity and afternoons you can plan around, and that is when a coating cures the way the manufacturer intended. It is also when the good crews book out, which is the practical reason to start the conversation before you need the work rather than after.
Wet season exterior work happens and it works, but it is scheduled around morning windows and it moves when the sky says so. A painter who promises you a fixed five-day exterior in August is promising something the weather has a vote on.
Rules of thumb, labelled as such
Where this applies
What fails first depends on what your house is made of and where it stands. The city pages go into the housing stock street by street, and the service pages into how interior and exterior work are scoped.
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