Exterior Painting serving Cape Cod and Metro West MA.

Before choosing a color for the outside of a house on the Cape, find out which review board covers your address. The Cape Cod Commission counts 22 local and regional historic districts across the county's 15 towns, and the rules that apply to a repaint differ depending on which of them your property sits in, if any.

The regional district is the Old King's Highway Regional Historic District, which takes in parts of Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, Brewster and Orleans. The Town of Brewster describes it as covering the area north of Route 6 from Sandwich to Orleans, with each town running its own Historic District Committee. Those committees review changes to the exterior of buildings and structures, and Brewster lists color among the things an application is judged on, alongside design, proportion, texture and materials.

Other districts and what they review

Outside the Old King's Highway, Barnstable, Dennis, Eastham, Falmouth, Harwich, Mashpee and Provincetown have local historic districts under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40C. In those districts, the Commission says, any exterior alteration visible from a public way goes before the local commission. Chatham has its own historic business districts created by special legislation.

Whether repainting in the same color, or switching colors, needs a filing is something to confirm with your town's commission before work is scheduled, not after. Ask what form applies, how far ahead the meeting calendar runs, and whether they want paint chips or manufacturer color names. A paint date set before approval is in hand is a date that may have to move.

Every era of house along one road

Route 6A, designated a state Scenic Byway in 1992 and a National Scenic Byway in 2021, shows examples of every period of Cape architecture, according to the Commission, from 17th-century Cape Cod houses to Greek Revival and Victorian. On the Outer Cape, the Cape Cod Modern House Trust counts more than 100 modern houses, by designers including Marcel Breuer and Serge Chermayeff.

Each of those types asks something different of a painter. Clapboard and corner boards on a Greek Revival house show every brush mark and need careful scraping at the laps. Wood shingles that were once painted, rather than left to weather, can trap moisture if the paint film is too heavy. Flat, broad surfaces on a modern house reveal uneven sheen in raking light.

Old paint and lead

Census figures show 56.4% of the county's housing was built before 1980, and in Dennis the share reaches 72.9%; in Yarmouth, 67.9%. Exterior scraping on a house built before 1978 falls under the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule when it is paid work. That means ground sheeting extended out from the foundation, misting or wet scraping to limit dust, no open-flame burning or uncontained power sanding, and careful bagging of chips. The lead-safe painting page has the details.

Flood zones, exposure and the calendar

The Commission reports that Truro, Falmouth and Provincetown have the highest number of inventoried historic structures in flood zones, including many small early-20th-century vacation cottages in Truro's Beach Point area. On low-lying and waterfront lots, look closely at sill boards, the bottom courses of siding and the lower ends of trim, where standing water and splash-back start rot that paint alone will not fix.

Exterior paint needs dry wood, temperatures above the label minimum through the drying period, and enough time before evening dew. Our posts on the best time of year to paint and on common exterior paint failures walk through peeling near the ground line, blistering, chalking and mildew, and what causes each.