Unpopular opinion: Those painted curb numbers are way better than stenciled ones

I was walking through my neighborhood in Austin last week and noticed how the house numbers painted on the curbs were all faded and worn differently - some looked sharp as day one, others were completely illegible. The blocky stenciled ones seemed to peel faster and catch dirt in the corners, while the hand-painted ones from two summers ago still held up with just a little fading. Has anyone else done a side-by-side test to see which method lasts longer in real weather conditions?

2 comments

2 Comments

grant.kevin12d ago

Wait, aren't those painted ones actually stenciled with a brush though lol?

kai77911d ago

My neighbor down on Elm Street tried that last fall with both methods on his driveway. The stenciled numbers looked clean for about two months, then the edges started curling up like cheap vinyl decals. Meanwhile, the brush-painted numbers my wife did on our curb back in 2019 are still readable, just a little gray from the sun. The trick seems to be using the right paint, not the application method. Grant, you're right that a lot of the "hand-painted" ones are just stenciled with a brush, but the ones I'm talking about were done freehand by a guy named Roy who used to paint signs for the county fairgrounds. He passed away last spring, so I guess that's the end of that neighborhood tradition.