Summer's right ahead, and with that come wasps building nests in every nook and cranny of home exteriors. There are lots of noxious products out there that claim to keep the wasps and other insects at bay, but did you know that a simple color can do the job?
Light blue paint on porch ceilings isn't just done out of Southern tradition. Apparently, the color also keeps wasps from building nests and spiders from weaving webs overhead. Has anyone tried this and gained some firsthand experience repelling insects with color? Let us know in the comments below!
Image: via Apartment Therapy Boston's Blue Porch Ceilings
DIY Idea: Concrete Pendant Lamp
Danielle's Charming, Classic Walk-Up
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
White Enamel Flatwa...
On Saying No to Paleo: Why Eating Isn't One Size Fits All
Perfect Summer Cocktail Recipe: Honey Bourbon Lemonade
Paint used to have all sorts of noxious items in it. Milk paint was popular once. That included lots of lye. Was the blue paint milk paint? Wasps and insects won't like stuff with a high lye load. (Green paint used to have arsenic and do all sorts of off gas in wet weather.)
I bet it wasn't the colour. I bet it was all the other stuff paint was made from.
Apparently, it IS the color and not the noxious fumes. Google it – you will see that many people swear by. It has to do with the sky type color confusing the insects.
My dad always said that porch ceilings should be light blue, like the sky. At the time, I thought it was to emulate the sky above. It was only in my adulthood that I discovered why he always said that, which is the reasons stated above. Last summer I painted over the gross brown of our porch ceiling with a slightly more aqua than sky blue. It seems to be keeping the busy bees away, and the porch is so much brighter and more enjoyable.
Does this keep spiders out of my indoors too? If so I'll paint my entire dang house blue. :)
can insects even see color or is it the similarity in tone to the sky? if so, wouldn't pale greys, vanilla and other colors of the same intensity work?
In the South, we call it "Haint blue," and it's too keep the bugs and the "haints" (ghosts) away. :)
Google "milk paint lye wasps" and you will notice that the colour isn't what repels wasps, it is the lye (paint) that is added to the ceiling every year or every other year since milk paints fade. Milk paint was historically very popular because it was cheap and easy to make.
And, as I mentioned above, it was green with its arsenic that off-gassed. I was just pointing out how old paints, and wall papers, were actually quite toxic. But then people also thought cigarettes were good for you & cured many ailments too. People didn't know the dangers of the products they used.
The blue looks pretty. But paint now is not like paint used even 50 years or more.
"In the South, we call it "Haint blue," and it's too keep the bugs and the "haints" (ghosts) away. :)"
thats what I was always told. My current house is all blue, and it does nothing to keep spiders away. And my previous house had blue trim, and we had an annual problem with wasps.
I might go for the Haint Blue, but I'm skipping the Arsenic Green! http://paulabailey.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/arsenic-green/
It might deter some wasps, but the paper wasps near my house in Austin, TX could careless if the ceiling was a light blue (Rain Drop - Behr) or it's prior shade of a medium gray. Went with a lighter color to reflect more light and thus make the space brighter.
wasps have such excellent color vision that i don't think they'd avoid other pale colors, jrboitel. they're very sensitive the differences of blues and greens.