Exterior Painting for Sharon, MA homeowners.

Census estimates show 82.7% of Sharon's housing units are single-family detached homes, and 87.7% of occupied homes are lived in by their owners. Two questions are worth settling before picking colors: whether the property sits in a local historic district, and whether the paint on it is old enough to contain lead.

After that come the conditions on the lot itself, mainly how much shade and moisture the walls see.

Local historic districts and what they review

The town has four local historic districts. The first was created in 1970 with seven buildings in the town center. Cobb's Tavern on Bay Road became a single-building district in 1990, the Wilber School and Pleasant Street School formed a third in 2004, and the William R. Mann House on East Street, a Second Empire house from about 1875, was added by Town Meeting vote in 2025. Within those districts, the combined Historical Commission and Historic District Commission reviews exterior work that is visible from a public way.

The town's published documents don't say whether a paint color change alone needs a certificate, so on a district property, contact the commission before settling on a new scheme or altering trim details.

National Register listing is a separate matter. The Sharon Historic District along North Main Street, Stoneholm on Ames Street and the Borderland Historic District are on the Register, but under federal law, listing by itself places no restrictions on what a private owner does with the property unless federal funding or permits are involved.

Lead-safe scraping outside

According to the Census, 62.7% of the town's homes were built before 1980. On houses that old, the bottom layers on clapboards, window casings and porch parts may contain lead, and outdoor scraping scatters chips into the soil along the foundation, where they stay. For paid work on a pre-1978 home, the EPA renovation rule requires covering the ground beneath the work area, bans open-flame burning, and permits power sanding only with a HEPA-shrouded tool.

Done properly, that changes how long prep takes but not the finished result. The lead-safe painting page lays out each step.

Shade, needles and mildew

The town's open space plan describes predominant forest cover: oak and chestnut on the east side, white pine and hemlock mixed with hardwoods around Moose Hill to the west, and red maple wetlands to the south. A house beneath that kind of canopy dries slowly after a storm, and with annual rainfall averaging about 48 inches, shaded walls, north-facing ones especially, are the likeliest places for mildew and algae to take hold.

On those elevations, prep begins with a mildewcide wash and a thorough rinse, followed by probing the clapboards and sills for soft wood that needs replacing. Paint with mildew-resistant additives is worth specifying on the shady sides. Cutting branches back from the siding and keeping gutters free of pine needles helps the new coat last longer. Our list of common exterior paint failures shows what each kind of peeling points to.

When the weather allows

Exterior latex needs air and surface temperatures above the label minimum, which varies by product, plus dry siding and enough afternoon warmth for the film to set before dew forms. That rules out the coldest months entirely, and a late-fall start depends on the forecast for that particular week; the post on painting outside in November explains the limits. For repaint intervals, see how long exterior paint lasts.

A site visit over the winter gives time to settle the scope, the colors and any commission question before spring. Rooms inside are covered on the interior painting page, and decks and porch floors on the deck staining page.