What It Signifies to See a Blue-Painted Porch Ceiling
We sit on our front porch and chat for a good deal of the day. As my front porch ceiling is painted white, I must admit that I’ve never given it much thought. If you’re from the South, though, you might have considered porch ceilings previously because a lot of them are blue! There is a long-standing Southern tradition behind the choice of hue for porch ceiling paint, despite the assertions of some that it is only decorative.
Many homeowners in the deep South have painted their porch ceilings a light to medium blue for generations—roughly 200 years. The Gullah Geechee, a group of enslaved people who lived in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, are the source of this.
Folklore among the Gullah community claims that spirits, known as “haints,” are incapable of crossing water. The terrible legacy of slavery and brutality in the South led to the widespread idea that ghosts would become imprisoned on plantations and haunt the present and future occupants of the houses and properties. To deter these ghosts from entering the houses, the front porch ceiling was painted blue in an attempt to resemble water. A few inhabitants even went so far as to paint doors and window shutters in shades of blue.
Although it appears that this is the long history of blue porch ceilings, some people paint their ceiling porches blue to deter wasps from making nests there, to prolong the feeling of daylight, or just because they think it looks more fascinating than a plain white or wood ceiling. The fact that so many homes in the South have blue porch ceilings suggests that people there value the sentimental memories they arouse in addition to the intriguing but sordid history behind them.
You’ll understand the origin of the blue porch ceiling the next time you find yourself in the heart of the South!