Smilin' at Me: Blue porch ceilings may have been born in S.C. Lowcountry

WASHINGTON -- When Rebecca Parlakian and Larry Giammo renovated their suburban 1940s farm house five years ago, they added a porch. To make the addition look and feel old, as if it had always been there, they installed beadboard on the ceiling. The final touch -- painting the beadboard a pale sky blue.

"We got the idea from walking through Rockville's (Md.) historic district, where there are lots of houses with blue ceilings," Parlakian said. "For older homes, it just seems like part of the dressing now. It's so airy and fresh ... and so summery."

"When you pull in the driveway, it's very welcoming," said Adina Brosnan-McGee about the blue porch ceiling of her Cape Cod in suburban Hyattsville, Md. Her choice -- Benjamin Moore's Caribbean Breeze, a tropical turquoise.

From the palest of powder blues to varying shades of aqua, teal, cobalt, robin's-egg, periwinkle and gray, blue porch ceilings are popping up all across the country. Once just an old Southern tradition, this subtle design detail has made its way North and is being introduced to new generations.

The cerulean color is undeniably pretty, but that's not the only reason people are painting with blues.

Some have heard that the color fools spiders and wasps into thinking that the ceiling is the sky and, therefore, not a place where they can hang out or build webs and nests (a theory many homeowners say is untrue). Others believe that blue is a harbinger of good luck. And some are convinced that the color actually extends daylight and promotes a calming, cooling and relaxing atmosphere.

Then there are folks from the South who believe that blue ceilings scare away evil spirits.

It's an tradition that can be credited to the Gullah/Geechee culture, a mix of African tribes that made up a large part of the slave population once found in the Carolina Lowcountry (from Georgetown, S.C., through the Georgia Sea Islands), said Leigh Handal, a director at the Historic Charleston Foundation. These people brought many customs and myths with them to the United States, including the superstition that the color blue ward off evil spirits ("haints," or haunts). The Gullah people would paint the woodwork around their windows and doorways to ward off the haints, Handal said. This painting practice spilled over onto porch ceilings, and the color came to be known as "haint blue."

But don't call the foundation to find out the exact color. "There is no official haint blue color," Handal said. "The Gullahs used whatever pigments of paint they could get their hands on. Haint blue is just blue." (That said, the Historic Charleston Foundation has two licensed paint collections through Duron Paints, featuring a color that represents their interpretation of haint blue, a deep shade of turquoise called "Gullah Blue.")

Yet today's homeowners are fixated on finding the perfect shade.

Customers inquire about blue ceilings "all the time," said Carl Langhorne, an assistant manager at a hardware store in suburban Bethesda, Md., who said that he has noticed an increased interest in the past two years. "Some people are manic about it. They get three, four, five different quarts trying to get the right color. Some people try to mimic the sky. Others don't care as long as they have it and as long as it's blue."

He has heard the Gullah myths but said he thinks that most people paint with blue simply because it makes them feel good. "It gives you a nice relaxing, mellow vibe," he said. "I like it. It beats basic white."

Langhorne starts his customers' search with a few suggestions across the spectrum of blues -- Benjamin Moore's Mystical Blue ("more of a true blue"), Crystal Springs ("blue with a little green to it") and White Satin ("periwinkle blue"). The choice should ultimately be based on the other colors on the house and what they like best, he says. "I always tell them, ‘It's your ceiling,'" he says, "You can do anything you want."

But most paint experts agree that the best shade of blue is the one that fits the look of the house. "You don't want it (a blue ceiling) to look like an afterthought or like it came out of nowhere," cautions Zoe Kyriacos, an architectural color consultant for Colors by Zoe in suburban Takoma Park, Md. "You want to make it look like it was part of the package."

She says that blue can be used on any style of house; it just depends on the blue. "A traditional house would use a more traditional color, something lighter. On a contemporary house you can do something bolder, something brighter." Kyriacos prefers blues with hints of other colors, which make the blue more complex and interesting to look at, she said. A blue with a drop of red in it, for instance, adds "a little warmth."

Also consider the natural light. Colors tend to get washed-out when used outdoors, so there's a little wiggle room to go darker than you would indoors. But be careful not to go too dark. "You want to keep the blue soft, light and airy," Langhorne says. "If you go too dark, it will bring your ceiling down and make the space feel smaller and more closed in, even outside."

For Parlakian, the process was easy. She simply picked a subtle shade she liked (Benjamin Moore's Arctic Blue) and painted.

And now that she has gone blue, she'll never go back.