Does Blue Paint On Your Porch Ceiling Actually Repel Bugs?

Front and back porches often serve as the welcoming point to any home, with the best of them giving off feelings of calmness, energy, and connection with both the interior of the residence and the natural world around it. If you happen to visit the south, you may be delightfully surprised to find a swathe of unexpected blue on the porch ceilings. This common color, usually a pale creamy blue with a hint of green, dominates the porch undersides in many cities lined with rows of architecturally stunning properties in areas like Charleston and New Orleans. The reason for this choice has long been rumored as a way to deter birds and insects from choosing to make the porch their home. According to some, the color tricks the invaders into thinking it is the sky or the sea. Confused, they usually move on to make their home somewhere else.

But will painting your home's porch ceiling with this pretty color repel pests like wasps, spiders, and nesting swallows? According to experts, maybe not. But is pale blue still a beautiful shade with a long cultural and architectural history? Yes! It may just be the perfect color to make your porch calming, stylish, and welcoming.

The long-held belief that blue porch ceilings deter insects and birds may just be a mix of cultural and urban legend. Often called "haint blue" by southerners, the color's properties have roots in the Gullah Geechee culture of enslaved Africans, who harbored a belief that the color could repel "haints," a word for restless spirits or ghosts. These spirits would become confused by the blue and believe it was water, which they could not cross. The shade was often used throughout the south as a way to ward off ghosts and even insects from a home at their most common entry point.

According to paint experts at Sherwin Williams, however, the warding off properties are an unproven legend based on other contributing factors, per Real Simple. These include the fact that the popular shade was historically a variety of milk paint made with lye, which does have a proven deterrent factor with insects. While based on scent and not visual trickery, the association of blue ceilings and pest-free porches stuck. However, many homeowners still swear that even modern-day brands of soft blue work to keep insects at bay.

While a swathe of blue overhead may not keep bugs and birds away, it can be a beautiful color for this often-forgotten area that greets guests. Pale blue is a hue usually associated with calmness, peace, and playfulness, making it perfect for this important entry point to your home. It is also a color that reflects the natural world around it, whether it's the openness of the sky or the sea of beachfront abodes.

Because of its cultural associations and rumored insect-proofing qualities, it's also a color that has just worked its way into the architectural style bedrock, and using it is a classic and stylish way to draw the eye up for a bit of surprise and delight. "People paint the porch ceiling blue because the color seems to emulate the natural sky and makes the daylight hours feel as though they last just a little longer," Sue Wadden, director of color marketing at Sherwin-Williams, told Real Simple. While it may not keep bugs and birds out of your hair while enjoying long summer nights, it will give you something beautiful to gaze up at while relaxing with a glass of iced tea on a long summer evening.