Most national guidance suggests repainting an exterior every eight to ten years. That figure comes from milder climates. In Central Florida, direct UV exposure, near-constant humidity, wind-driven rain, and intense summer sun all shorten a coating's working life considerably.
For stucco, a quality elastomeric system properly applied over prepared and primed substrate should give you seven to ten years. Standard acrylic on stucco, closer to five to seven. Painted wood siding, trim, fascia, and soffit run shorter — four to six years — because wood moves with moisture and opens the coating at every joint. Within a few blocks of open water, take two years off any of those numbers.
The failure signs arrive long before visible peeling. Chalking is the first: run your palm across a sunny south or west elevation, and if it comes away with a fine powder, the binder in the coating has broken down under UV and the pigment is no longer held together. That surface will not hold a new coat properly until it is washed and primed.
Next comes hairline cracking in stucco, then failed caulk at windows, doors, and expansion joints. Caulk almost always fails before paint does, and it is the single most common route for water to get behind a wall. Dark streaking below windows and under the roofline usually means mildew, which needs treatment rather than simply painting over.
Timing the work matters too. Painting an exterior in the middle of the summer rainy season means fighting afternoon storms and trapping moisture under fresh coatings. The drier months from roughly November through April give you far more reliable dry-time windows, which is why our exterior schedule fills earliest in that stretch.
One thing worth saying plainly: a repaint is not only cosmetic. Exterior coating is the building's weather barrier. Letting it go three years past its life to save on a repaint frequently leads to stucco repair, wood rot, or water intrusion that costs several times the paint job you postponed.