A tiered outdoor room in Los Angeles — covered pergola, built-in fireplace, stone retaining walls, concrete patio floor, surrounded by hillside planting — got a top-to-bottom color refresh. Every structural surface was repainted in a soft sage green; the concrete floor went warm terra-cotta. The result is less a backyard patio and more a Mediterranean courtyard room.

What got painted

• Pergola framing — posts, beams, rafters, and the finished underside of the roof
• Outdoor fireplace, chimney column, and the stepped stone surround
• All stone and brick retaining walls above and behind the patio
• Concrete patio floor

Why one color across every surface

A patio like this had the usual outdoor-room problem: too many materials, too many tones. Weathered pergola wood, stained brick walls, grey stone, raw concrete — individually fine, together busy. Pulling everything to a single quiet sage knits all those materials into one room. The ceiling of the pergola, painted the same color as the walls, becomes a surface the eye reads as sky, not structure. The warm terra-cotta floor grounds everything and ties the color to the clay planters already in the garden.

Prep

Outdoor paint lives or dies on prep. Every surface was washed to pull off dust and old chalked finish. Loose mortar and flaking old paint on the stone were scraped. Any exposed metal (lantern brackets, screws) was spot-primed with a rust-blocking primer. Masking covered the furniture, the planted beds, and the concrete floor during the vertical surfaces’ paint. The concrete floor got its own round after the vertical surfaces were cured.

Paint on wood, stone, brick, and concrete — different jobs

Each surface took a different coating approach:

• Wood pergola: exterior-grade acrylic over bare-wood prep, two coats, brushed into joints and rolled on flat
• Stone and brick: masonry primer first (critical — raw stone pulls the moisture out of regular paint and causes it to fail), then two coats of exterior masonry paint
• Concrete floor: concrete-rated floor coating designed for foot traffic, applied in two coats with a roller

The result

The patio reads as a single, considered room rather than four different materials fighting each other. The sage color stays soft in bright LA sun and reads richer in the shade. The warm floor keeps the whole space grounded. The owner’s furniture, planters, and antique details pop against the quiet background.

Project summary

• Scope: full exterior paint refresh — pergola, outdoor fireplace, stone and brick walls, concrete floor
• Color: sage green on all vertical and overhead surfaces, warm terra-cotta on the concrete floor
• Materials painted: wood, stone, brick, concrete — each with its own primer and coating system
• Coats: two coats throughout

Outdoor room that’s reading tired, mismatched, or dated? Get in touch — we handle full exterior paint refreshes across all materials.