City of Franklin · Milwaukee County, WI
House painting in Franklin.
Interior, exterior, cabinet and fence painting across the City of Franklin, where half of today’s homes went up in 1990 or later and the old village of St. Martins has zoning districts of its own. Bonded and insured, with written estimates and a written workmanship warranty.
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Our services
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Interior painting
Walls, trim, ceilings and whole-home refreshes with clean, low-disruption job sites.
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Kitchen cabinet painting
Degreased, sanded and sprayed for a smooth, hard-wearing kitchen finish.
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Epoxy floor coatings
Cold-tolerant epoxy and polyaspartic coatings for garages and basements.
Franklin homes
A farm township that became a city of newer houses
For its first century Franklin was farm country. The Encyclopedia of Milwaukee’s entry on the city describes a heavily wooded, 36-square-mile frontier on the Racine County line, cut through by the Root River, that became a civil township on December 20, 1839. Suburban building started in the early 1950s with two low-cost housing developments west of 76th Street and south of Rawson Avenue. Franklin voted 704 to 220 to incorporate and became a city on August 15, 1956, yet in 1962, 80 percent of its land was still counted as farmland.
Most of the houses came later. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2020–2024) puts the median year built for Franklin’s 14,540 housing units at 1990 (±2 years). The 1990s were the biggest building decade, with 20.7% of units, and the 2000s added 19.7%, so about four homes in ten date from those twenty years; counting everything since, 50.7% were built in 1990 or later. The 1950s, with 10.0%, out-built the 1960s (6.2%), and only 4.0% of homes are older than 1950.
Single-family detached houses make up 61.7% of units and attached ones, such as townhouses, 7.6%, while a quarter (25.5%) are in buildings of five or more units. Owners live in 77.3% of occupied homes. In a condominium or townhouse association, the outside colors and the repaint schedule may be the association’s decision, so check your documents before you choose; inside your unit, walls, trim, doors and cabinets are usually yours to decide.
Wisconsin’s lead-safe rules, further down this page, apply to work on homes built before 1978, a year the Census decades do not split. The nearest they allow is a bracket: between 22.5% (built before 1970) and 36.5% (built before 1980) of Franklin’s owner-occupied homes. For a house from the 1970s the exact year decides it, so put it in the estimate form if you know it.
Exterior
Repainting a house from the 1990s or 2000s
A house built between 1990 and 2009 is now roughly 17 to 36 years old. The U.S. Forest Service’s handbook on finishing wood exteriors says where paint on wood siding and trim normally fails first: at lap and butt joints, and at the edges of panel products such as hardboard. It also says paint deteriorates fastest where it gets the most sun and rain, usually on a building’s south and west sides, and that a weathering coat gradually chalks and erodes away. On a house that age we check those places first, along with the caulk at trim joints, corner boards, window and door casings and wherever siding meets trim, since caulk that has shrunk or cracked can let water in behind the coating.
So on a newer Franklin house our prep starts at the joints. Failed caulk is cut out and replaced, chalky walls are washed and primed where the new coat needs it to bond, and bare cut edges are sealed before the finish goes on. If your siding is vinyl, the paint work is usually the trim, fascia, soffits, entry doors and garage door, and at the estimate we will say plainly whether anything else should be painted.
Houses from the 1950s through the 1970s are a different job: more layers of old paint, more scraping and spot-priming where old paint has let go, and, before 1978, the lead-safe rules.
Exterior scope
- Wash, scrape and sand to a sound surface
- Failed caulk cut out and replaced
- Cut ends sealed and bare spots primed
- Trim, fascia, soffits, doors and garage doors
St. Martins
St. Martins: the old village inside the city
Franklin’s new zoning code, in force since June 9, 2025, gives the old village of St. Martins two districts of its own.
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The R-V Village Residence District is there to preserve the single-family character and architectural qualities of what the code calls the St. Martins Historic Village Area, and its stated intent is that new houses on vacant or underused lots there stay consistent with the area’s historic visual character. Its companion, the B-SM district, is meant to keep the village’s traditional character and built form while it holds shops, services and upper-floor apartments. The city’s 2025 zoning map labels the area “Village of St. Martins”.
R-V also allows the smallest lots of the city’s single-family districts. An R-V lot may be as narrow as 60 feet and as small as 7,200 square feet, with a house as close as 5 feet to a side lot line; in the R-SR Suburban Residence District the minimums are 80 feet, 10,000 square feet and 10 feet, and a Countryside (R-C) lot must be 150 feet wide. Where houses stand that close together, the ladders for a side wall may have to stand on the neighbor’s side, so it helps to talk to them before the job is booked.
Several older Franklin buildings were surveyed again in 2025 for the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Architecture and History Inventory, and their records show what the old houses are made of. One on St. Martins Road, built in 1860, is a Greek Revival house with a two-story Gothic Revival wing behind it, “essentially two houses” in the surveyor’s words, with wood clapboard, brackets, posts and dentils on its porches and fish-scale shingles in the gable ends. A 1948 English Revival house on the same road is brick with stone details, and a 1910 front-gabled house on W. Church Street has its walls, eaves and returned eaves covered in vinyl. Herda’s Hardware is in the inventory as well: a 1923 brick hardware and farm-implement store that two brothers founded in St. Martins, one of two stores that served 20th-century farm families in the area.
Each of those surfaces calls for its own prep. Clapboard, brackets, dentils and fish-scale shingles are scraped and brushed by hand, which takes longer than flat siding, so mention them in the estimate form and the written estimate will allow for it. Brick and stone raise a separate question first: should they carry paint at all? On a house wrapped in vinyl, the painting is the trim, porch and doors. The inventory records we read list each of these buildings as not on the National or State Register.
Historic preservation
When a new color needs a certificate
Franklin’s municipal code has a historic preservation chapter, Chapter 151, adopted in 1997. It creates a seven-member Landmark and Historic Preservation Commission, which can recommend that the Common Council designate landmarks and historic districts by ordinance; each designation is recorded with the Register of Deeds. On a designated landmark, or a property inside a designated historic district, no alteration visible from the outside may be made without a Certificate of Appropriateness (§151-10), and a material change in exterior appearance needs one even when no building permit does (§151-12).
The chapter names color directly. It leaves ordinary maintenance and repair of exterior features free of review only when there is no change in “design, material, color or outward appearance” (§151-11). On a designated property, then, a repaint in the existing colors fits that exception, and a new color does not, so expect to need a certificate for it. Applications go through the Building Inspector’s office, the Commission decides at its regular monthly meeting, and a certificate expires six months after it is issued, so the painting should be booked inside that window.
Finding out whether a property is designated is harder. We found no published list of landmarks or historic districts designated under this chapter, and the Commission does not appear on the city’s current page of boards and commissions. If you think your house may be designated, ask Inspection Services (414-425-0084) or the Planning Department (414-425-4024) before exterior work. The St. Martins zoning districts described above are zoning, not designations under this chapter.
Homes built before 1978
Lead-safe rules for homes built before 1978
Wisconsin’s Lead-Safe Renovation Rule applies to a home or property built before 1978 when the work will disturb more than 20 square feet of painted surface outside, more than 6 square feet of painted surface per room inside, replace windows, or involve demolition. That work must be done by a certified Lead-Safe Renovator working for a certified lead company. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services publishes a list of certified companies, updated monthly, so you can check any contractor.
Permits and review
Permits, review boards and color rules for houses
Painting is not on the list of work that needs a permit from the city’s Inspection Services. For one- and two-family homes, that department requires a building permit for additions, remodeled living space and repairs or changes that involve structural components, and separately for new or replacement siding, decks, fences, garages and sheds. If prep turns up siding that has to be replaced, that part of the job needs a permit, and for one- and two-family home permits the department asks you to allow at least 10 business days for processing.
Design review of houses is light compared with some other suburbs. Mequon and Hartland both have architectural boards; the code section for Franklin’s Architectural Board (§10-16) was repealed on June 17, 2025, by Ordinance 2025-2688, and the board is not on the city’s current list of boards and commissions. The 2025 zoning code exempts single-family and duplex development from site plan review (§15-9-03(B)(1)), and we found no color rule for houses in it. It does ask that an accessory dwelling unit, such as an apartment over a detached garage, have architectural features similar to the main house, including roof pitch, windows and cladding, and “similar exterior colors” (§15-4-13(A)(11)), so if you have one, plan to repaint both together.
Two kinds of property can carry rules of their own. Land zoned PDL, the code’s Planned Development Legacy District, still follows the planned development ordinance it was approved under (§15-2-02), so read that ordinance before an exterior change. And in a condominium, or a subdivision with an association, its documents may settle colors before the city ever would.
Fences
Franklin’s fence rules, read for paint and stain
Every fence in Franklin needs a building permit before it is built; only snow fencing, allowed from November 15 to April 15, goes without one. The 2026 fence handout from Inspection Services, which points to section 15-5-08 of the zoning code, sets the rules most likely to shape a paint or stain job.
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For a one- or two-family home, the fence must stand wholly inside the property line, with no post or board crossing it, and at least a foot back from a line along a street right-of-way or a city easement. Its finished or decorative side must face the neighbor or the street.
Put together, those rules leave the good face of a backyard fence on your land but turned toward the neighbor, so painting or staining it usually means working from their side; ask them before the job is booked. In a front yard the limit is four feet and 50% opacity, which means open designs such as pickets or rails, with every edge to coat. Behind the house a fence may be six feet tall and fully solid, or eight feet in a rear yard along an arterial road. Wood must be chemically treated or naturally decay-resistant; composites, aluminum, wrought iron, vinyl and masonry are also on the permitted list, and chain link is allowed in the interior side and rear yards of a one- or two-family lot.
Color comes in only in general terms. A fence must be kept in good repair and structurally sound, built and kept in a good aesthetic condition, in materials and colors that do not adversely affect the value, visual character or visual appeal of neighboring property or the immediate neighborhood. No color is named, unlike Brookfield’s tan-or-brown rule for some fences. Masonry fences are prohibited in the Floodplain Overlay District. Our fence painting and staining notes cover board prep and the choice between paint and stain.
Weather
Inland or lakeside: Franklin’s painting season
Three NOAA stations with temperature normals lie within about 8 miles of Franklin’s center, all of them to its north or east. The nearest, Hales Corners / Whitnall Park, is about 4 miles north-northwest of the city’s center; Milwaukee Mitchell Airport, about 7 miles northeast, and South Milwaukee WWTP, about 8 miles east, both sit nearer Lake Michigan. In their 1991–2020 normals the outdoor season differs by three to four weeks. The median stretch between the last spring night of 36°F or colder and the first one in fall runs from May 14 to October 3 at Hales Corners, a 141-day median, against May 5 to October 16 (162 days) at South Milwaukee and May 1 to October 18 (168 days) at Mitchell.
For paint, the gap shows in September. The normal September low at Hales Corners is 51.3°F, with 15.2 nights on average at 50°F or below; South Milwaukee’s is 56.0°F with 7.0 such nights, and Mitchell’s 56.4°F with 7.6. In October, Hales Corners averages 19.0 nights at 40°F or colder and South Milwaukee 11.8. The Hales Corners figures rest on only 10 or 11 years of data and South Milwaukee’s on 14 or 15, and no station describes a single yard.
Because the city’s center is nearest the inland station, its dates are the safer plan for a Franklin exterior: June through August with standard latex, which needs 50°F, and September and early October with a paint made for low temperatures and a forecast that holds. Our season guide sets these three stations beside five more, and our Greenfield page, for the city to the north, reads Hales Corners beside West Allis. For a lakeside comparison, our Bay View page reads Mitchell, its nearest station, beside South Milwaukee and Mt Mary.
Franklin painting questions
Do I need a permit to paint my house in Franklin?
Painting is not on Inspection Services’ list of work that needs a permit. For one- and two-family homes, that list includes new and replacement siding, decks, fences, garages and sheds, and repairs or changes involving structural components. If the job grows into replacing siding, that part needs a permit, and for one- and two-family home permits the department asks for at least 10 business days of processing. Questions go to Inspection Services at 414-425-0084.
Does the City of Franklin have to approve a new exterior color?
For most houses we found no rule requiring it. The code section for the city’s Architectural Board was repealed in June 2025, the 2025 zoning code exempts single-family and duplex development from site plan review, and we found no color rule for houses in that code. The exceptions: a designated landmark or a house in a designated historic district, where Chapter 151 exempts maintenance only if it changes no color, so expect a new color to need a Certificate of Appropriateness; land zoned PDL, which follows its own planned development ordinance; an accessory dwelling unit, which must have similar exterior colors to the main house; and any condominium or association rules.
Is St. Martins a historic district?
It has its own zoning: the R-V Village Residence District and the B-SM district, created to preserve the character of what the 2025 zoning code calls the St. Martins Historic Village Area. That zoning is not the same as a historic district designated by ordinance under Chapter 151, and we found no published list of districts or landmarks designated under that chapter. The Wisconsin Historical Society records we read for St. Martins Road list those buildings as not on the National or State Register. If you are unsure about your property, ask Inspection Services or the Planning Department before exterior work.
Which way does my fence face, and can both sides be painted?
The finished or decorative side must face the neighboring property or the street, and a fence for a one- or two-family home must stand wholly inside your property line. So the outer face is on your land but is usually reached from the neighbor’s side; ask them before the job is booked. The city requires fences to be kept in good repair and in a good aesthetic condition, in materials and colors that do not adversely affect neighboring property, but it names no colors. We paint and stain wood fences; mention yours in the estimate form.
When is the best time to paint a house exterior in Franklin?
At Hales Corners, the NOAA station nearest the city’s center, the median season free of 36°F nights runs from May 14 to October 3, and September averages 15.2 nights at 50°F or below. The stations nearer Lake Michigan, at South Milwaukee and Mitchell Airport, run three to four weeks longer. With standard latex, plan on June through August; September and early October call for a low-temperature paint and a cooperative forecast.
How it works
What to expect, from first call to final walkthrough
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Free, no-pressure estimate
An honest look at your home.
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Clear written quote
A straightforward, honest scope.
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Thorough prep
Wash, scrape, sand, repair, caulk, and prime.
Where we work
Greater Milwaukee
- Milwaukee
- Wauwatosa
- West Allis
- Whitefish Bay
- Shorewood
- Mequon
- Bay View
- Greenfield
- Franklin
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from
U.S. Census Bureau (tables B25003, B25024, B25034, B25035, B25036): American Community Survey 2020–2024 housing tables, read October 22, 2026.
U.S. Census Bureau (internal point used for the station directions): 2024 Gazetteer file of Wisconsin places, read October 22, 2026.
Encyclopedia of Milwaukee (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee), entry on Franklin: City history, read October 22, 2026.
USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (Agriculture Handbook 647, 1986): Finishing wood exteriors: selection, application, and maintenance (PDF), read October 22, 2026.
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City of Franklin, Inspection Services: Permits issued by Inspection Services, read October 22, 2026.
City of Franklin, Inspection Services (2026): Fences: general guidelines (PDF), read October 22, 2026.
City of Franklin, Planning: Unified Development Ordinance rewrite page, read October 22, 2026.
City of Franklin, as amended by Ordinance 2025-2701 (October 7, 2025): 2025 Unified Development Ordinance text (PDF), read October 22, 2026.
City of Franklin: Ordinance 2025-2675, adopting the rewrite (PDF), read October 22, 2026.
City of Franklin, adopted May 6, 2025: 2025 zoning map (PDF), read October 22, 2026.
City of Franklin Municipal Code (eCode360): Chapter 151, historic preservation, read October 22, 2026.
City of Franklin Municipal Code (eCode360), §10-16: Chapter 10, boards and commissions, read October 22, 2026.
City of Franklin: Boards and commissions, read October 22, 2026.
Wisconsin Historical Society, inventory record HI8680: Greek Revival house, 1860, read October 22, 2026.
Wisconsin Historical Society, inventory record HI229438: English Revival house, 1948, read October 22, 2026.
Wisconsin Historical Society, inventory record HI8717: Front-gabled house, 1910, read October 22, 2026.
Wisconsin Historical Society, inventory record HI8718: Herda’s Hardware, 1923, read October 22, 2026.
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (stations USC00473391, USC00477964, USW00014839): U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020 (annual), read October 22, 2026.
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (same stations): U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020 (monthly), read October 22, 2026.
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information: Station inventory with coordinates, read October 22, 2026.
Sherwin-Williams: Exterior product application FAQ, read October 22, 2026.
Wisconsin Department of Health Services: How to hire a lead-safe contractor, read October 18, 2026.
Census figures are survey estimates with margins of error. City rules change, so check with the office named above before you plan exterior work.
Wisconsin · Google reviews
Tyler Cooper
Great team they have, and great quality of work. Family owned company that gets the job done correctly. :)
Patryk Pogorzelski
Amazing work very professional would definitely hire them again!
Painting in Franklin, done properly.
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