Exterior painting in Bellingham, WA

What an exterior repaint costs in Bellingham

A full exterior repaint on an average Bellingham home runs $4,200 to $9,350. The starting rate is $2.75 per square foot of siding, and most houses take 3 to 7 days on site.

The spread is wide because Bellingham houses are far apart in what they need. A 1,600 square foot rambler off Barkley with sound fiber cement and paint that is only chalking sits near the bottom of that band. A 1910 two story in the Lettered Streets with cedar lap siding, cut up window trim, and paint curling off the south and west walls sits at the top of it.

Four things move the number more than color ever will.

• Prep hours. Scraping, feather sanding, and spot priming is the largest single line on most Bellingham bids. On a house with failing paint it can run past half the labor.
• Substrate. Cedar pulls primer in and pushes tannin back out. Fiber cement usually wants a wash, fresh caulk, and paint.
• Access. Two stories, a cut bank lot in South Hill, or siding above a deck means staging and planks instead of a 24 foot ladder.
• Rot. Soft trim, punky sill nosing, and blown window stools get found during prep, not during the estimate.

Ask every bidder to split the price into wash, prep, primer, and finish coats.

One number and one sentence tells you nothing about where the hours went, and the hours are what you are actually buying. Current scope and timeline are on the exterior painting page.

Exterior painting price bands in Bellingham, WA

Prep hours drive the number harder than square footage does. Two houses the same size, one with sound paint and one peeling off two walls, can land at opposite ends of the $4,200 to $9,350 band.

What 36 inches of rain a year does to a paint job

Bellingham averages about 36 inches of precipitation a year, and it does not arrive evenly. November averages 5.4 inches, December 4.9, and January 4.8. August averages 1.3 inches and July 1.4.

That is the whole painting calendar in four numbers.

The workable exterior window here runs from late June into late September, and rain is only half the reason. Sherwin-Williams allows Duration and its stablemates down to 35 degrees F. Benjamin Moore lists 40 degrees F as the floor for Aura exterior. Either way the temperature has to hold for the air, the surface, and the paint in the can, and the surface has to stay above the dew point for roughly 48 hours after the coat goes on. Benjamin Moore's published guidance is to keep the surface more than 5 degrees F above the dew point.

Bellingham nights in July and August average about 54 degrees F. On a clear night in September that number falls fast and dew lands on the siding around four in the morning. A coat that has not coalesced yet gets a chalky bloom or tan surfactant streaks running down the wall, and you see it at breakfast.

Then there is what grows here. North and east walls that never take direct sun hold moisture, and algae, moss, and mildew settle into the siding, the shadow line under lap boards, and anything tucked under a deep eave. A wall in Columbia or Roosevelt shaded by a mature Douglas fir will green up years before the sunny side shows any wear at all.

Homes in Edgemoor and Fairhaven that face Bellingham Bay carry a salt film on the windward walls, which makes the pre-paint wash matter more there than it does two miles inland. Decks and railings above Lake Whatcom in Silver Beach and Sudden Valley get the same damp without the salt.

Older houses, the lead rule, and checking registration

Census figures for 2020 through 2024 put 17 percent of Bellingham's roughly 43,800 housing units at 1939 or earlier, and 42.8 percent built before 1980. Countywide, 39.6 percent of Whatcom homes predate 1980. The York neighborhood was essentially built out by the Great Depression, and the Fairhaven and South Hill historic districts go back to the 1880s and 1890s.

So the EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule is in play on a large share of the exterior work in this town. It covers housing and child occupied buildings built before 1978. Outdoors it kicks in once the job disturbs more than 20 square feet of paint, which on a peeling wall is most of one elevation. Indoors the trigger is 6 square feet per room. Window replacement and demolition of painted surfaces are covered regardless of size.

What that changes on your property:

• The firm has to hold EPA Lead-Safe certification, which runs five years. Bellingham Painting Co. is an EPA Lead-Safe certified firm.
• You receive the EPA Renovate Right pamphlet and sign for it before work begins.
• Ground gets covered, the work area gets contained, and cleanup happens at the end of each day.
• Open flame burning, heat guns above 1,100 degrees F, and power sanding or grinding without HEPA exhaust are all prohibited.

Separate from lead, Washington requires contractor registration through Labor and Industries under RCW 18.27. Since July 1, 2024 a general contractor carries a $30,000 bond and a specialty contractor $15,000, up from $12,000 and $6,000. Liability coverage has to be at least $200,000 public liability and $50,000 property damage, or a $250,000 combined single limit. There is no state painting trade exam, so registration and bond status is the real check available to you.

Look the company up at ProtectMyHome.net or call L&I at 1-800-647-0982 before you sign anything. Bellingham Painting Co. operates as KINGTIDES LLC, UBI 605 901 722.

How to read two bids on the same house

Two honest bids on the same Bellingham house can land at opposite ends of the $4,200 to $9,350 band. The gap is almost always prep and coats, and it is almost never printed plainly on the page.

Read for six things.

1. How the wash is described. High pressure on 1920s cedar drives water behind the boards and shreds the soft summer grain. You want low pressure and a detergent that kills the growth. A separate pressure washing line of $385 to $825 is normal.
2. Scrape and sand, or scrape only. Feather sanding the edges of scraped areas is what keeps you from reading every old paint edge through the new finish in low afternoon light.
3. Spot prime or full prime. Bare cedar needs a stain blocking primer or the tannin comes through as brown weeping, usually inside the first wet season.
4. Coats, and where. Two coats on the body and one on the trim is a different job from two coats on everything.
5. Caulk. Which joints, and what product. Cutting out failed caulk at window casings takes hours and is the easiest line to skip quietly.
6. Rot allowance. A straight bid names an hourly rate or a unit price for carpentry discovered during prep rather than leaving it open ended.

Then ask each bidder how many gallons they have figured. Aura exterior spreads at 250 to 350 square feet per gallon at the film build the manufacturer specifies. If someone has 12 gallons figured for a house that needs 20, the math tells you exactly what is going to happen to the second coat.

Get the paint line, the sheen, and the number of coats written into the contract by name. A bid that says quality premium paint is a bid that has not decided yet.

The coatings that belong on a wet climate house

Bellingham Painting Co. specifies Benjamin Moore Aura and Sherwin-Williams Duration for exteriors here. Both are 100 percent acrylic, both carry a mildewcide, and both stay flexible enough to move with cedar through a wet winter and a dry August.

The numbers worth knowing off the data sheets:

• Aura exterior low lustre spreads 250 to 350 square feet per gallon, wants 4.6 to 6.4 wet mils to land at 2.0 to 2.8 dry mils, and needs air and surface at 40 degrees F or above.
• At 77 degrees F and 50 percent relative humidity, Aura is dry to touch in an hour and recoatable in four. At 58 degrees and 80 percent humidity on an October morning here, both of those stretch, sometimes across the whole day.
• Duration can go down to 35 degrees F, which buys a few workable weeks in spring and fall when the dew point cooperates.

Primer is where cedar jobs are won or lost. Western red cedar carries water soluble extractives that migrate through latex and stain it brown. The Western Red Cedar Lumber Association's own remedy for extractive bleeding is to eliminate the moisture source and prime with an alkyd primer under a latex topcoat. A stain blocking primer over every bare or previously bleeding area is cheap next to repainting a wall in year two.

Caulk should be a paintable elastomeric or urethane sealant rated for exterior joint movement.

One detail that costs nothing: if a carpenter is replacing trim on your house, the fasteners need to be hot dipped galvanized, aluminum, or stainless steel. Plain steel nails in cedar rust and bleed black streaks straight through fresh paint, and the only fix is pulling the nail.

How the week actually runs

Three to seven days on site for most Bellingham exteriors. Here is where those days go.

Day one, wash. Low pressure wash with a detergent that kills mildew and algae, working top down, with plants covered and pre-wetted. Then the house sits. Wood siding wants 48 hours of dry weather before anything gets applied to it, and longer on a shaded north wall.

Days two and three, prep. Scrape, feather sand, cut out failed caulk, set popped nails, replace rot. This is the slow part, and it is the part homeowners are tempted to shorten.

Day three or four, prime and caulk. Spot prime bare wood and any area that has bled before, then caulk after priming so the sealant bonds to primer instead of raw cedar.

Days four through six, finish coats. Body first, then trim, then doors. On siding, spraying and backrolling puts material on fast and then works it into the grain and the laps so it bonds rather than sitting on the surface. Two coats on the body is the standard here, and the second needs to land inside the manufacturer's recoat window.

Last day, cut in and punch list. Sashes, downspout straps, and a walk around with you holding the list.

Weather resets that clock without asking. A crew starting a coat at four in the afternoon in mid September, with the sun off the wall and the dew point climbing, is buying itself a callback. A crew that stops at two and comes back tomorrow is doing it right, even though from your kitchen window it looks like they quit early.

Why exterior paint fails here and what the fix costs

Paint on a Bellingham house rarely fails from sun. It fails from water, and from prep that got rushed.

Peeling in sheets on the south and west walls. Usually paint applied over a chalky or damp surface, or latex over old oil with no bond coat. The repair is scraping back to sound material, priming, and repainting that whole elevation. On one wall of a two story that is a real fraction of the $4,200 to $9,350 band, and you pay for the staging a second time.

Brown weeping down the siding. Cedar tannin coming through because bare wood got topcoated with no stain blocking primer. Washing does not stop it. It has to be primed and recoated.

Black spotting back within six months. Mildew that was painted over instead of killed. The growth is alive under the film and pushes through again.

Blistering with water behind it. Moisture escaping from inside the wall, often a bath fan dumping into the attic or failed flashing above a window. Repainting without fixing the water source fails again on the same schedule.

Surfactant leaching. Tan drips that show up the morning after painting, when a fresh coat catches dew or rain before it cures. Often washable if you catch it in the first week. This is the direct cost of painting too late in the day in September.

The pattern in all five is the same. Water got somewhere it should not have been, or a step got skipped before the pretty part started. The 2 year workmanship warranty covers the workmanship category. It does not cover a leaking roof valve above the wall, and no warranty from anyone does.

Where doing it yourself makes sense

A single story rambler with fiber cement or vinyl, no lead paint, and a finish that is chalking rather than peeling is a reasonable weekend project. Wash it, let it dry two days, caulk what has opened up, and roll two coats with a good three quarter inch nap. Materials for a house like that run a few hundred dollars and a couple of weekends.

Where it stops making sense:

• Pre-1978 paint that is peeling. The RRP rule binds contractors, not homeowners working on their own house. The dust is the same dust either way, and it lands in the soil around the foundation where kids and dogs spend their summer.
• Two stories on a slope. Ladder falls, not brushwork, are what put homeowners in the emergency room. A cut bank lot in South Hill or Edgemoor makes ladder footing a genuine problem.
• Cedar that has never been primed. Get the primer wrong and you are repainting in two years instead of ten.
• A short weather window. A crew can put a whole house together inside one five day dry stretch. Someone painting Saturdays in September gets rained on partway through, and a half finished wall weathers unevenly along the stop line.

Splitting the work is often the sensible middle. Put a crew on the body and the second story, and take the fence, the shed, and the front door yourself. The same logic applies to interior painting, where a mistake costs a lot less and nobody is on a ladder over a hillside.

How long it lasts and what you do after the crew leaves

A properly prepped exterior with two coats of Aura or Duration should hold 8 to 12 years on the protected walls in Bellingham. South and west elevations, and anything catching wind off Bellingham Bay, show wear sooner, often around year 6 to 8. Cedar shingles and heavy trim detail come due before flat fiber cement does.

What actually extends it:

1. Wash the north side every spring. A garden hose, a soft brush, and a bucket of mild detergent kills the algae film before it takes root. Ten minutes a wall.
2. Keep plants 18 inches off the siding. Shrubs pressed against a wall hold water against the paint all winter, and that is the most common cause of early failure on the shaded side of a Bellingham house.
3. Clear the gutters twice a year. Once in November when the maples finish, once in March. An overflowing gutter runs water down the fascia and in behind the top course of siding.
4. Touch up in year four. Buy an extra quart at the time of the job, write the color and sheen on the lid, and store it indoors where it will not freeze.

Recaulk window and door joints as soon as you can see a hairline opening at the casing. That is a single afternoon and it keeps water out of end grain, which is where rot always starts.

Two things worth timing with a repaint: deck staining while the site is already staged and the weather is already right, and a standalone house wash in the off years to slow the growth down.