Here’s What It Means If You See A Porch Ceiling Painted Blue

People in the South, we’re pretty quirky when it comes to our traditions.

We paint our doors red as a sign of hospitality and as a good luck charm for wealth.

You will find more fake dark blue shutters on the outside of windows than I can even count.

I’m actually not sure why we do this — but we all do.

Another thing you will find on houses in the South is a porch ceiling that has been painted blue.

You will usually see a light blue or a greenish blue porch ceiling — which is pretty — but why do people paint their porch ceilings blue?

Why Do People Paint Their Porch Ceilings Blue?

This tradition of painting porch ceilings blue started about 200 years ago in the early American South.

According to Taste of Home, this tradition started with the “Gullah Geechee, enslaved people living in the low country of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.”

You see, the Gullah people were pretty superstitious, and they believed that ghosts — known as “haints” — were unable to cross water.

In order to prevent these spirits from entering houses, the Gullah people painted their porch ceilings a soft blue to mimic the color of water.

This was supposed to trick the haints, and make them stay out of houses.

Hey, I’m all for anything that keeps the creeps and spooks out of my house!!

Some Gullah people even went as far as to hang blue bottles in their front yard trees to keep the spirits away.

You will still see them peppered throughout the South to this day.