Reinforce And Revitalize Metal Siding With Rhino Shield

If you are not sure which you have, a magnet is the simplest check. It sticks to steel and not to aluminum. Steel panels are heavier for the same size, and steel dents sharply where aluminum dents with a smoother dish shape. Any orange rust confirms steel. A chalky, powdery surface with no rust at all points to aluminum, though either metal chalks eventually.

Metal is one of several materials covered across our exterior house painting services. If you already know you have aluminum, see aluminum siding painting for that material specifically.

For more on how paint film breaks down and how color fades, see why exterior paint flakes and why exterior color fades.

Six things account for nearly every failed metal siding coating.

On sanding: you do not have to sand metal siding down. Chalk removal and spot scuffing at damaged areas are a different job from full sanding, and on sound panels the wash and scrub do most of the work.

Here is the thing worth knowing if you are on the fence. Properly installed steel siding routinely stays structurally sound for forty years or more while the factory finish fades out well before it. Owners of forty-year-old steel regularly report panels in good shape under a finish that died two decades earlier.

You may have come across advice arguing that painting metal siding is a mistake, and that a clear restoration coating is the better route. That advice is not wrong, it is describing a different situation. A clear restoration product restores an intact, still-bonded factory finish to its original color and luster. It is not the right tool once that finish has chalked out, faded unevenly, or once you want a different color. That is where a full coating system takes over.

Replacement is genuinely the better call in some cases: siding rusted through structurally, extensive impact damage, or a problem in the wall assembly behind the panels. We will tell you plainly which situation your home is in. If you are weighing metal against other materials, we also handle vinyl siding painting.

A typical single-family exterior runs three to five days.

Painting metal siding cost depends on a handful of variables, and one dominates the rest.

Rust extent is the biggest single factor. A wall with a few surface spots and a wall with rust working along the fastener line are very different amounts of prep labor, and prep is where the hours go. Square footage and stories set the baseline. Chalking severity adds washing. Panel profile matters, since ribbed and deeply embossed panels take longer to build even film across than flat lap. A significant color change adds material, and difficult access adds time.

Weigh that against replacement rather than against doing nothing. Replacement means tear-off labor, disposal, new material, and installation on a wall whose panels are very often still sound.

We do not publish figures here, because a number without your walls in front of us is a guess. The estimate is free and comes in writing.

See what a Rhino Shield exterior costs for the full breakdown.

The approach is the same across all three: identify the substrate, treat the rust, remove the chalk, prime for the metal, and spray. What changes is scale, profile, and access equipment.

Steel siding usually outlives the finish on it by a couple of decades. The panels hold up. The color gives out first, and that is the problem a coating solves.

If the material is new to you, here is what ceramic coating actually is. Rhino Shield’s formulation runs at roughly 21% water, against about 60% in a typical latex paint, which is part of why the applied film builds to eight to ten times thicker than standard paint. On metal that thickness matters directly, because a heavier, better-bonded film resists the expansion and contraction stress that cracks a thinner coating.

A 25-year warranty backs the work, every job is insured, and every estimate is in writing first. Custom color matching is available. The 4.9 out of 5 across 49+ reviews is not a number we assigned ourselves, and you can read our customer reviews to see how those jobs went.

The warranty means something because it has been tested. One customer’s 2021 job developed peeling and some color variation within about a year. We assessed it in person and fully recoated the home within five days, no argument.

Rhino Shield of Cincinnati and Kentucky serves Cincinnati, OH, Louisville, KY, and Lexington, KY, along with the surrounding Ohio Valley and Bluegrass region, where freeze-thaw winters and humid summers both put real, repeated stress on metal siding finishes year after year.