Jun 2, 2020
Image: Haint blue ghost - clipartpanda.com
Take a tour of the American South, and you’ll no doubt notice a common feature of the traditional houses pushed back from the sidewalks according to historicalpost.com. Interestingly, the vast majority of homeowners have painted their porch ceilings and window shutters a particular shade of blue. And if you were to enquire about the name this color, you’d probably be informed that it’s “haint blue.” Yet the history behind the use of this popular shade is likely more sobering – and horrifying – than you’d initially imagine.
Naturally, many people won’t have given much thought to the color of their porch ceilings or shutters. In fact, it’s possible – and even likely in some cases – that people choose haint blue in order to continue family traditions. And this is a factor that strategic design intelligence director Ellen O’Neill from paint producer Benjamin Moore touched upon when she spoke to Today in 2017.
O'Neill said, “No one would think twice about painting their porch blue, because their grandmother’s and their parents’ [porches] were blue. It’s permeated into porch design.” Color design expert Lori Sawaya also confirmed this to paint manufacturer Sherwin-Williams. She said, “Porch ceilings have always been blue in the South.”
Yet the porch-painting tradition had to have started somewhere. And it seems that the origins of painting blue shutters and porches could be rooted in either everyday concerns – or a more shameful shared history. Putting forward a case for the former, then, Sherwin-Williams states that the practice could have started with the Victorians.
The theory goes that the Victorians – or those who lived in the mid- to late-19th century – liked using paints reminiscent of nature to decorate their properties. So, for instance, your typical Victorian might have employed earthy colors, such as ochre or terracotta, on their home. This would apparently have brought to mind a sense of being outside.
So, the Victorians seemingly chose blue for their porch ceilings for the exact same reason; it would remind them of bright, clear skies – even when the actual weather was miserable. And while O’Neill didn’t namecheck the Victorians specifically, the designer does appear to agree with the general concept.
O'Neill told Today, “A blue sky is an optimistic thing to look at. It reminds us of daybreak; it wards off gloomy weather and delays nightfall. Painting a ceiling blue brings in nature and the sky.” Yet it seems that reminding people of long, summer days is not the only rational reason for desiring a blue porch ceiling.
According to Colour Affects – and a number of other sources – blue tones normally have a relaxing impact on people. And if this is true, it follows that it would be the ideal color with which to decorate a porch. After all, it wouldn’t do to be feeling stressed out or enraged while sitting out on the stoop enjoying a bit of quiet time.
As we mentioned, blue is the color we associate with a clear sky. So, it can also work as an extension of the natural surroundings. Lori Sawaya told Sherwin-Williams, “Light blues especially lighten and brighten space and propagate any light that you do get, because of the basic nature of color.”
But there’s another practical reason for folks choosing a blue porch ceiling – though it may be more of a myth than many believe. You see, the theory goes that blue paint will help keep insects at bay during the warmer months. O’Neill said to Today, “If an insect perceives that a ceiling is really the sky, it instinctively wouldn’t nest there.”
O'Neill continued, “It depends how deep you want to go into the brain of an insect… but it’s not unlike how ladybugs will land on a white house. It’s a visual trick.” Other homeowners seemingly believe there’s truth in this theory, too, and they have painted their porch ceilings blue as a consequence. But it’s possible that it’s not 100 percent accurate – at least, not anymore.
Historically, the blue paints used on ceilings were normally “milk paints,” and they often had lye stirred into the mix for good measure. So, it was the lye that typically served to keep bugs away. And as milk paints would often deteriorate with the passage of time, the addition of extra layers of paint every now and then boosted the amount of lye on the ceilings and shutters.
Of course, paint is rarely made with lye these days. Sherwin-Williams’ paints are, for instance, usually mixed with water or oil. In fact, lye is now more likely to be seen in chemical paint remover rather than ready-mixed paint. So, it seems that blue paint’s ability to keep porches bug-free could be something of a legend.
Yet people obviously started painting their porches and shutters blue for a reason. But was it for one of the reasons presented above – or the more sobering meaning we’ll soon explore? Or perhaps it’s because the color is simply adaptable; after all, there’s a blue to fit every kind of household.
In fact, O’Neill told Today that blue will work “regardless of the rest of the paint colors” on a house. The designer explained, “It looks like, ‘Oh, of course, that’s the sky.’” Yet while interior designer Zoe Kyriacos agreed on principal, she argued to Sherwin-Williams that there’s a little more to it than that.
Kyriacos said, “You don’t want [a blue ceiling] to look like an afterthought or like it came out of nowhere. You want to make it look like it was part of the package.” And the color expert had further advice on selecting just the right color for your house as well.
If you’re looking to decorate an older-style home, Kyriacos recommends considering a paler blue. But if your house is more modern, you could be better off selecting a blue with extra attitude. And to mix things up a little, the designer reckons that blues with suggestions of different tints could work well too.
The shade that we’re most interested in, though, is haint blue. This is the subtle, almost turquoise blue that is seemingly favored by southerners – particularly in South Carolina. And the name of this particular shade should offer up a clue to its supposed mythical origin. This in turn will also highlight the more shameful aspects of the color’s history.
You see, the word haint actually refers to a spirit or ghost in southern folklore. But – as you could probably guess – these are not friendly spirits. According to the legends, haints or “boo hags” were unpleasant beings that had somehow liberated themselves from their human hosts.
These dastardly ghosts would then roam the land after nightfall looking to maim or possibly murder anyone who might cross their paths. So, if you believed these stories – as the Gullah people of the South apparently did – it’s understandable that you might want some kind of protection against the evil haints.
So haint blue is supposed to confuse the spirits and therefore keep people safe from harm. But how does it do this? Well, it actually links into some of the factors we discussed earlier – namely that blue can resemble the color of the sky or water.
This particular shade of blue was significant because the boo hags were believed to not have been able to travel through water. It was also thought that the spirits wouldn’t go near the sky because the victims they sought were on the ground. So, by painting ceilings, shutters and even glass bottles this particular hue, people believed that they were being protected.
But while the stories of boo hags might not necessarily be true, the history of haint blue paint is still shocking – and very real. It also has very little to do with supernatural spirits and everything to do with unfathomable hardship. In reality, it all started with indigo plants and a 16-year-old girl named Eliza Lucas.
Indigo dye – an essential component of blue paint – once came predominantly from indigo plants. This was a time long before synthetic indigo could be mass-produced, of course. And in the 18th century the hard-to-get dye from these herbs, trees and shrubs was a sign of affluence.
So, it was a turning point in South Carolinian agricultural history when the young Lucas initially extracted indigo in 1742. This was the moment that the dye was first farmed in the United States, and just five years later, a shipment of the precious material made its way across the Atlantic.
Remember, the American Revolution wouldn’t occur for another 20 years – so at the time the United States was still a British colony. And as indigo was much sought after in Europe, the export of the dye became big business. In fact, at its most successful, over 1.2 million pounds of indigo left the U.S. in a single year, according to the South Carolina Encyclopedia.
Incredibly, Ancestry.com claims that the indigo trade became the second-largest export business in the United States. Those in charge of the cultivation of the dye were therefore earning great wealth. And indigo was being used to create luxurious clothing for Europe’s upper classes. Yet there was one major catch to the large-scale production of the rare dye.
Ihere was no easy way of cultivating the plant, and the process of transforming the plant to dye could take up to 20 hours. This involved labor-intensive, time-consuming methods such as soaking, beating, draining, drying and transporting the goods. It also depended on workers with specialist knowledge.
Such a convoluted process in making indigo would normally make turning a profit out of trading the product almost impossible. But in the mid-18th century, wealthy plantation owners would take advantage of their slaves to provide free labor. More specifically, land owners relied on the knowledge and expertise of African slaves.
There was another problem, too. As the demand for indigo increased, so too did the apparent need for slave labor. This led to an influx of African slaves to South Carolina. And according to Ancestry.com, more than half of all slaves landing in America ended up in the state.
Yet it wasn’t just the African slaves who found themselves falling on hard times. The demand for indigo got so great, you see, that plantations eventually started to run out of land. And this resulted in the land owners taking more land from nearby indigenous tribes.
So now the increasing number of slaves found themselves working on ever-expanding territories of land. And, as you might imagine, the slaves had already endured horrifying conditions. The ships used to bring them into the country were typically rife with systematic abuse and disease, after all. Furthermore, a fifth of African slaves in the mid-18th century didn’t even make it off the boat, according to the Black History Month website.
Life on the plantations was likely not much better, either. Louise Miller Cohen, who established the Hilton Head Island Gullah Museum, told Atlas Obscura in January 2020, “If [reparations were] attached to indigo, they would do everything possible to keep the word from ever being mentioned.” The indigo boom, though, would soon come to an end.
The American Revolutionary War took place between 1775 and 1783. And after the conflict ended, the Thirteen Colonies achieved independence and officially founded the United States of America. But the trade of indigo effectively crashed a few years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The United States was no longer beholden to the Brits, after all, and the latter country began to look to India for its indigo needs. So as quickly as 1802 – just 20 years after the war – the dye wasn’t a factor in Carolina’s exportation trade. But it would still be another 63 before slavery was abolished – and land owners simply found another trade through which to exploit their workforce.
Those African slaves who first cultivated indigo were the forebears of the Gullah people. And it was their apparent belief in boo rags and haints that seemingly brought the color blue to prominence in the South. So, it’s this group who are also making strides to reclaim the importance of haint blue.
Heather L. Hodges, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor National Heritage Area’s executive director, told Atlas Obscura, “Indigo dye is deeply rooted in African culture.” She also explained that haint blue “is widely used by Gullah Geechee visual artists and filmmakers as a way of expressing their shared… heritage and history with indigo cultivation.”
For instance, Julie Dash’s acclaimed movie Daughters of the Dust features an indigo theme throughout. It has even been argued that the film’s use of indigo represents the ways in which the characters must interact with their own painful pasts. The picture also happens to be the first from an African-American woman to get distributed across the country.
Both Cohen and Hodges also revealed that they actively worked with the dye to help the locals reconnect with the past. The pair even organized workshops and events around the use of indigo. Cohen told Atlas Obscura, “I’m interested in learning all I can about the crops that caused my people [the] loss of their freedom.”
So the use of haint blue on shutters and porch ceilings throughout South Carolina and beyond is seemingly commonplace. Yet it appears that the history of this shade of blue is far from well known. For the Gullah and their African ancestors, though, its importance should never be forgotten.
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