Painting HardiPlank Siding: How to Paint HardiPlank Without Voiding Your Warranty

James Hardie build­ing prod­ucts are an excel­lent brand to use for your home sid­ing pur­poses. HardiePlank®, or HardiPlank ® as they’re occa­sion­ally referred to, is durable fiberce­ment board sid­ing that is meant to last through the most extreme weather and tem­per­a­ture conditions.

What many cus­tomers love most about HardiPlank sid­ing is how ver­sa­tile it is. In addi­tion to being strong enough to with­stand the major­ity of the ele­ments, HardiPlank mate­r­ial can mimic the appear­ance and tex­ture of wood, leav­ing a beau­ti­ful fin­ish. HardiPlank sid­ing instal­la­tions can also be per­formed with Hardie board mate­r­ial that comes in a wide vari­ety of nat­ural col­or­ing, as well as pre­s­e­lected Col­or­Plus tech­nol­ogy to cre­ate an array of beau­ti­ful, nat­ural home sid­ing options that sim­ply require instal­la­tion for a gor­geous finish.

How to Paint HardiPlank

Now, while Col­or­Plus tech­nol­ogy already pro­vides home­own­ers and com­mer­cial prop­erty own­ers a beau­ti­ful home sid­ing prod­uct, James Hardie’s fiberce­ment board sid­ing can also be painted by the home­owner if they choose to change or touch up the color. While this makes your options eas­ier, it’s impor­tant to under­stand there are still spe­cial guide­lines which need to be con­sid­ered for best results of HardiePlank paint­ing projects.

Paint HardiePlank® sid­ing within the war­ranty spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Your war­ranty clearly states that primed Hardi sid­ing needs to be painted within 180 days, or roughly 6 months, of instal­la­tion. If your sid­ing is unprimed, then you’re allowed 90 days, or about 3 months, to have the sur­faces painted. Fail­ure to fol­low these guide­lines will can­cel out your warranty.

Use the right paint and mate­ri­als for the job. The com­pany highly rec­om­mends the use of their Prime­Plus prod­uct to prime your home sid­ing. Prime­Plus is spe­cially for­mu­lated to for use on fiberce­ment sid­ing, such as that of your James Hardie sid­ing. After your sur­face is prop­erly primed, it’s best advised that you pur­chase 100 per­cent acrylic exte­rior paint for your home, as acrylic paint is best suited for fiber cement, stone and stucco exte­rior painting.

Avoid the temp­ta­tion to stray from using proper paint­ing mate­ri­als to get the job done. For exam­ple, do not use oil based paint in order to paint your build­ing. Oil based paints on unprimed fiber cement will result in unde­sir­able effects. These effects include:

• increased sur­face roughness
• loss of adhesion
• crack­ing
• exces­sive chalking.

James Hardie does not sug­gest the use of oil based paints over unprimed fiber cement sid­ing. Stains con­tain­ing lin­seed oil are specif­i­cally designed for wood and are not con­sid­ered suit­able for fiber cement sid­ing prod­ucts, whether primed or unprimed.

More Tips for Paint­ing HardiePlank Material

Make sure all of your caulk­ing is com­pleted, and that all of your rough, and cut ends are primed when pos­si­ble. A good Hardi installer will prime every cut where it is pos­si­ble before installing. Addi­tion­ally, make sure that you com­plete a com­plete wash­ing of the HardiPlank exte­rior prior to paint­ing. This increases the dura­bil­ity of the paint job and helps to main­tain the fin­ish by pre­vent­ing pre­ma­ture peel­ing and chipping.

You have a choice of var­i­ous fin­ishes to use for your home exte­rior paint­ing. Many users say Satin fin­ish, while very shiny at first, is best because it will main­tain a new a fresh look as the shine wears down. With time, it will con­tinue to look new with min­i­mal main­te­nance, even more so than sim­ply using a Flat fin­ish, which will look bet­ter ini­tially but appear duller over time.