Stucco Color

There is stucco that comes in a bag and there is stucco that comes in a bucket.

The stucco that comes in a bucket is more commonly known as synthetic stucco.

Bagged stucco comes with a color already tinted in it so all you do is add water and mix. While it may seem to be good practice to use a measured amount of water for bagged stucco, it is not often seen in the field. Water is added until stucco becomes workable. Too much or not enough water can cause the color to become lighter or darker. Color selection of bagged stucco is very limited compared to synthetic stucco.

Synthetic stucco comes pre-blended in a base white color. Most of the time you are given a color cup with the tint in it. The tint cup contains a measured amount of formula to achieve a specific color. This tint cup gets poured in the bucket and gets mixed until the color is uniform. Sometimes that manufacturer will mix the tint in the bucket for you in order to ensure consistency with their color for all their clients. Similar to paint, almost any color can be achieved with synthetic stucco. Manufacturers can transfer the formulas of paint colors to stucco colors. A lot of the Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore colors are already transferred by the stucco manufacturers.

Stucco color is mostly used in earth tone colors. Brighter or darker colors are more commonly used on commercial projects. These brighter and darker colors are a lot harder to tint and usually come with an expensive additional tint charge.

CLICK HERE to View the Pre-Blend Stucco Color Chart

CLICK HERE to View the Quaker Stucco Color Chart

CLICK HERE to View the STO Color Chart

Stucco Patch

What is the deal with a stucco patch?

It is very difficult to perfect. Why? Because a stucco patch will never match.

When installing the stucco finish, you can’t stop until you reach a terminating end or dissimilar surface (terminating ends can be inside & outside corners). This is because when applying stucco on a wall, you only have about 20 minutes of working time. You don’t want to stop and start allowing enough time for the stucco to dry because you will see a noticeable difference in stop and starting points.

Consistency in mixing the stucco is crucial because if you add too much water or not enough, that may make the color of the stucco a shade lighter or darker. Once the stucco dries completely, a patch will be noticeable. The older the stucco, the worse the patch won’t match.

Trying to patch older stucco is difficult because the stucco has probably faded and the pores of the stucco has probably collected some particles from vegetation, dirt, rust, & run-off causing stains or discoloration.

A common stucco patch is around windows and doors because the only way to replace a window or door surrounded by stucco is tear off the stucco around the window or door. The best solution for this is to patch the stucco around the window or door and then put stucco trim around it so that it will hide the patch. If stucco trim is not an option to hide the patch, then the only way to make the patch disappear is to resurface the entire area using terminating ends or dissimilar surfaces. This helps better ensure blending of color and texture with the rest of the building.

If the texture matches but the color doesn't then instead of adding an entire new layer of stucco, you can possibly paint the area to get a better match.