Beginning with the early American settlements and continuing into the 18th C , most barn were n’t paint at all . Early American barn builders took sun exposure , temperature , moisture , wind , and pee drainage patterns into score when placing and building barn , and they temper the wood ( that is , they reduced the moisture capacity ) accordingly . The right type of wood in the right surround held up very well without any key .
Toward the end of the 1700s , these erstwhile - schoolmethodsof b provision and building fell by the wayside . masses sought a flying , easier fix for maintain their barn — a way to cake and seal the wood to protect it from sunlight and wet damage . Farmers began make their own covering from a mix of linseed oil ( a tawny rock oil derived from the flax seeds ) , Milk River , and lime . It dried quickly and live a long time , but it did n’t really protect the Natalie Wood from mold and was n’t quite like the " barn red"we know today — it was more of a burn off orangeness , really .
Turning Red
The problem withmoldis that it disintegrate wood and , in large quantity , can pose health risks to people and animals . rust fungus , it turns out , kill moulding and other type of kingdom Fungi , so farmers begin add ferrous oxide ( rust smoothing iron ) to the flaxseed oil mix . A little bit of rusting go a tenacious means in protect the wood , and it founder the b a prissy red hue .
By the belated 19th century , mass - bring out pigment made with chemical pigments became available to most citizenry . Red was the least expensive color , so it remained the most popular for use on barns , except for a brief period when whitewash became punk and white barns start up kill up . ( White barns were also common on dairy farm farms in some parts of Pennsylvania , central Maryland , and the Shenandoah Valley , maybe because of the color ’s connexion with cleanliness and purity . )
Throughout Appalachia ( a historically poor region ) , many barns depart unpainted for lack of money . In the tobacco regions of Kentucky and North Carolina , dim and brownish barns were the average , since the saturnine colors help heat the barn and curative tobacco .
Today , many barns are still paint the colour traditionally used in a given region , withredstill dominating the Northeast and Midwest .
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This narrative was update in 2019 .
