Excellent painting and careful preparation. Our house looks amazing!
Exterior House Painting in Pasadena, CA
Pasadena Elite Painting is Los Angeles County's trusted expert in exterior house painting, specializing in wood siding restoration, stucco recoating and UV-stable finish systems for hard inland sun. We offer full-property colour schemes and single-elevation repairs.
Our team provides documented washing, scraping and priming, delivering lasting protection for homes and specified systems for both residential and commercial projects. Fully licensed (CSLB #585047), insured and bonded, we handle everything from a porch and trim refresh to a complete two-storey repaint.
From re-glazing failed window putty to following the shade around a building so the film flows instead of skinning, our team handles every detail. Serving Pasadena, La Cañada Flintridge, Sierra Madre and Arcadia, we ensure fast, efficient service and deliver reliable, professional and weather-resistant results on every exterior painting project.
- Elevations worked with the shade
- Bare wood spot-primed, not skipped
- Lead-safe practices on pre-1978 homes
- Licensed, insured and bonded
Reviews
What clients say about our exterior work
Our home’s exterior looks brand new again. The finish is smooth, even, and professionally done.
The exterior paint had faded badly from years of sun exposure. After the project was completed, our home had stronger curb appeal and a fresh, updated appearance. The trim work looks especially sharp.
Beautiful exterior painting and excellent workmanship from beginning to end.
We had peeling paint and minor surface damage on the outside of our home. The team prepared the problem areas carefully before applying the new paint. The finished exterior looks smooth, durable, and professionally restored.
Pasadena Elite Painting transformed our older home with fresh interior and exterior paint. The preparation work was thorough, the color coverage was consistent, and the finished surfaces look outstanding. The entire property now feels well maintained and updated.
Friendly service, beautiful results, and great attention to detail.
Pasadena Elite Painting repaired several damaged areas of drywall before repainting our bedroom. The repaired sections blend perfectly with the surrounding walls, and the finished room looks clean and polished.
01
Reading exterior paint failure before you repaint
Paint does not fail randomly. Each pattern points at a cause, and coating over the symptom without dealing with the cause buys you a season or two at most.
| What you see | Likely cause | What the repaint has to do |
|---|---|---|
| Chalky residue on your hand | Ultraviolet breakdown of the coating binder, worst on south and west walls | Wash the chalk off completely, test adhesion, then a bonding or masonry primer |
| Peeling in sheets down to bare wood | Moisture behind the film, or a coat applied over a dirty or damp surface | Remove the failed coating back to sound edges, find the water path, dry, prime bare wood |
| Cracking in a scale pattern | Alligatoring in a thick stack of old coats that have lost flexibility | Scrape out, feather the edges hard, and strip back where the stack is too deep to save |
| Blistering on sunny elevations | Solvent or moisture trapped by coating applied in direct heat | Cut out the blisters, prime, and reschedule that elevation for a shaded part of the day |
| Colour faded unevenly wall to wall | Ultraviolet load differing by orientation, worst on south and west | UV-stable pigment, and darker tones reserved for shaded planes |
| Bare grey wood at sills and sash | Failed glazing putty and standing water on horizontal surfaces | Re-putty and re-bed the sash, prime bare timber, rebuild profiles where the wood has gone |
| Dark streaking below gutters | Overflow or failed flashing tracking water down the elevation | Correct the water path first, then clean and prime the stain before coating |
02
The exterior sequence, and why the order is fixed
Preparation is roughly two thirds of an exterior job on an older Pasadena house. If a quote looks unusually quick, this is the part that has been left out of it.
Wash the building
Pressure washing at a pressure the substrate can take, which is not the same number on 1915 redwood siding as it is on 1960s stucco. This takes off chalk, dust, cobweb and airborne grime from the freeways and canyons. The building then dries fully before anything else happens.
Scrape and sand
Every loose and lifting edge comes off and the remaining edges are feather-sanded so the transition disappears under the new film. On pre-1978 homes this runs under lead-safe practices with sheeting, contained debris and no dry open sanding.
Repair the substrate
Rotten trim and sill sections cut out and pieced in, open joints in siding re-bedded, stucco cracks cut out and mesh-bedded, sash re-glazed where the putty has gone. This is the step that stops the same failure returning in the same spot.
Caulk and prime
Joints caulked with a flexible exterior sealant, then priming: bare wood spot-primed, chalking stucco given a masonry primer, and tannin-rich timber like redwood and cedar given a stain-blocking primer so the tannin does not bleed pink through a light topcoat.
Coat with the sun, not against it
Elevations are worked in shade. In a Pasadena summer, coating a west wall at three in the afternoon gives you lap marks, dry spray and a film that never properly flowed out. The schedule follows the shade around the house across the day.
Trim, doors and detail
Fascia, eaves, rafter tails, window trim, garage doors, iron railings and the front door are cut and finished last, usually in a harder enamel than the field colour so they take the handling and the weather.
03
Substrates, and the system each one needs
Most Pasadena houses are not one material. A single elevation can carry stucco, wood trim, a brick base and metal railings, and putting the same product on all four is how three of them fail early.
Wood siding, shingle and trim
Needs a coating that stays flexible as the timber moves with heat. Bare areas spot-primed, tannin-rich species blocked, and a 100% acrylic finish that keeps its elasticity. On pre-1930 houses this often crosses into restoration painting.
Stucco
The question is always whether the crack pattern is shrinkage or movement, and whether the wall still needs to breathe. That decides between elastomeric, standard acrylic and a mineral system, and it is covered in detail on the stucco painting page.
Metal and iron
Railings, gates, security screens, downpipes and roll-up doors. Rust is taken back to sound material, a rust-inhibiting or direct-to-metal primer goes on, and the finish is a DTM enamel rather than a wall product that will shed within a year.
Colour on a large elevation
A colour behaves differently at building scale than it does on a card. Under Pasadena's strong, warm daylight a mid-tone reads at least a step lighter outdoors than it does indoors, and saturated colours look considerably more intense across a whole wall than they do in a two-inch square. Dark schemes also run hot: a deep exterior colour on a south or west elevation absorbs far more heat, which accelerates both fading and substrate movement. We put large sample areas on the actual elevations and look at them morning and afternoon before anything is ordered.
04
Frequently asked questions about exterior house painting
What time of year is best for exterior painting in Pasadena?
Spring through autumn carries the widest working window. Winter is not impossible, but the rain falls almost entirely between December and March and the cool, damp mornings shorten the usable day considerably, since a coating applied onto a dewy surface will not bond properly. Peak summer is workable as long as elevations are followed around with the shade rather than coated in direct afternoon sun.
How often does an exterior need repainting here?
It depends far more on orientation and substrate than on a number. South and west elevations under this much ultraviolet load tire well before north-facing walls, so it is common for one or two elevations to need attention while the rest are still sound. Wood siding also runs a shorter cycle than sound stucco. We will tell you if only part of the building genuinely needs doing.
Do you replace rotten wood as part of the job?
Yes, and it is quoted as its own line rather than hidden inside the painting price. Sills, sash bottoms, rafter tails, fascia ends and the bottom courses of siding are the usual casualties. Small sections are cut out and pieced in with matching profile. Where the rot is extensive we say so, because painting over soft timber is money spent on a surface that will fail again.
Is pressure washing safe on an older house?
At the right pressure, yes. At the wrong pressure it will drive water behind the siding and shred soft old redwood. Pressure is matched to the substrate, water is directed downward rather than up under the laps, and the building is given time to dry through before any coating goes on. On very fragile surfaces we hand wash instead.
Can you paint just one elevation or one section?
Yes, and sometimes it is the sensible recommendation, particularly where a west wall has burned off while the rest of the house is fine. The caveat is that a newly coated elevation will not match a weathered one even in the same colour, so we talk through where the transition falls and whether it will read as deliberate or accidental.
What happens to plants, paving and windows during the job?
Everything gets covered. Shrubs and beds are sheeted, hardscape and driveways are protected, windows and fixtures are masked, and light fittings and house numbers come off where practical rather than being cut around. On foothill properties with mature planting tight to the walls we agree in advance what can be tied back and what has to be worked around.
Do you paint eaves, soffits and vents on foothill properties?
Yes, and on properties above the 210 in Altadena, Sierra Madre and La Cañada Flintridge those details deserve a real conversation rather than a quick coat. Eaves, soffits and vent screens are where ember exposure concentrates, so the condition of the timber, the state of the screening and the coating specification all get looked at during the walk-through.
05
Related painting services
Exterior work almost always pulls in one or two of these.
- Stucco Painting
- Historic Home Restoration Painting
- Brick & Masonry Painting
- Deck & Fence Staining
- Limewash & Mineral Coatings
- Commercial Building Exterior Painting
Painting service areas
Exterior crews work across the foothills and the valley to the same standard.
Find out what your exterior actually needs
Send photographs of the failing areas or book a walk-through. The failure pattern tells us which system the building needs.
- Free written estimate
- Preparation itemised, not assumed
- Licensed, insured and bonded