“I always thought they should be (blue). I guess that’s just what we do. I like tradition and all that. I like to carry it on, even if I don’t know why.”
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Porches and Southern-style homes often go hand in hand, especially if the home is older. They’re places to nap, relax, enjoy summer evenings, and entertain guests. And if your home is 100 years old or more, there’s a good chance that if the ceiling isn’t painted blue, it was once blue.
But why? Does it keep away evil spirits known as ghosts? Does it stop wasps and other flying insects from nesting on the ceiling? Here’s a look at the ghost blue color and how it may have come about.
“Almost every house in town has a blue ceiling, so it’s practically ubiquitous,” said Carter Burns, executive director of the Historic Natchez Foundation. “Even houses that aren’t historic have a blue ceiling.”
“It’s traditional and that’s what people associate with a porch. They think of blue-gray floors and that blue ceiling. I think it’s seen as a Southern thing. Of course, in the South we probably have more porches than in other parts of the country.”
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Keeping the tradition of blue porch ceilings alive
Abby and Tate Hobdy bought an old house in Natchez and to make it a more livable place, they painted the porch ceiling with a fresh coat of blue.
“We renovated it and moved in last September,” said Abby Hobdy. “It was built in 1916.”
“It was painted blue, but I actually went for a lighter blue. It looks like the sky. It has more of a calming effect than anything else.”
Michael Rabb also recently purchased a home in Natchez, a 1900 Victorian that he renovated. Like Hobdy, there really was no other choice for his porch ceiling.
“I always thought they had to be (blue),” Rabb said. “I guess that’s just what we do.”
“I like tradition and all that. I like to carry it on, even if I don’t know why.”
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The Legend of Haint Blue Porch Blankets, Gullah and Haints
When Rabb said the words “I don’t know why,” he meant that he didn’t know why porch ceilings became such a tradition. A common story involves ghosts that are said to be evil spirits or witches. Legend has it that the blue ceiling looks like water, and ghosts don’t cross water, so they won’t come into a home with a blue porch ceiling.
The same was said about blue-painted houses, shutters and moldings.
Its origin is often attributed to the Gullah people, who are the descendants of enslaved people in Georgia and South Carolina. However, some doubt that this is the origin.
“In my family on Hilton Head Island, Haint Blue was never mentioned,” Louise Miller Cohen, founder of the island’s Gullah Museum, told the Savannah Historic Foundation in 2020. “People say we paint our houses blue to ward off evil spirits. If that were true, all the houses on the island would be painted blue.”
MiMi Miller, a historian with the Historic Natchez Foundation, also doesn’t believe that’s the origin. She said she’s seen the color on houses dating from 1798 to 1820, but the name Haint Blue came about much later.
“This paint has been around for a long time, but nobody called it haint,” Miller said. “In the past, people painted the interior walls of buildings with lime paint.”
“It was often bluish or blue-green. I don’t know when they called the color haint blue. I think the haint thing is part of a style. Things are styles that come and go.”
Styles come and go, but if this one ever truly faded into obscurity, it’s back now. Light blue paint for porch ceilings is now marketed as Haint Blue by paint manufacturers Sherwin-Williams and Behr.
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Does ghostly blue paint keep insects and wasps away?
One theory is that light blue paint on porch ceilings mimics the sky and discourages insects like mud wasps and yellow jackets from nesting on them. Hobdy said she heard of this theory and asked a Sherwin-Williams employee about it when she was picking out paint colors.
Hobdy said she was told that in the past this may have been the case because the paint contained lye, which may have repelled insects, but that this is not the case with today’s blue paint.
“I’m somehow convinced it keeps insects away, but the experts say it doesn’t,” Hobdy said.
Rabb agreed. “I have a wasp nest in the corner that I had to destroy, so I guess that’s not quite right,” Rabb said.
When it comes to ghosts, ghost blue paint has a much better track record. Miller said she owns two homes with ghost blue paint on the porch ceilings and she’s never had a problem with ghosts, although she admittedly doesn’t believe in them.
Hobdy said that while renovating her home, she experienced an unexplained incident in which an old knob on a radiator flew across the room and hit a wall near where she was painting. She wasn’t quite sure if it was a ghost or just a regular ghost, but after painting her porch ceiling with a fresh coat of blue, the problem seemed to be solved.
Rabb said he has lived in two houses with blue porch ceilings. When asked if he had had problems with ghosts, he replied, “I can’t think of anything. If I heard a noise at night, it was probably my cat.”
Have a story idea? Contact Brian Broom at 601-961-7225 or [email protected].
