Cecil, I’m disappointed in your answer. You described the reason barns are red (iron oxide in the paint), but not WHY they’re painted red. It’s not like the only pigment available historically was iron oxide. And houses, chicken coops, spring houses, smokehouses, etc. weren’t painted red - just barns. There has to be a rationale behind that pre-tourist tradition.
Link to Column: Why are barns red? – CKDH
I’m flying by the seat of my pants with this reply. (So, it’s probably wrong).
I always thought(read?) that, around the period 1880-1900, there were limited colors for paint. And that color red was one of them, if not the primary one(most available–and perhaps cheapest?). If that was the cheapest color, then you painted your big 'ole barn with it.
Victorian houses, at least in the US, were painted with an extremely limited number of color combinations. I’ve not the time nor inclination to go looking for cites at this point.
Again, you could always persuade me to believe something different.
Well, Samclem, that’s pretty much what Cecil said.
violet9, when you start a thread, it’s helpful to others if you provide a link to the Column that you’re commenting on. Keeps us all on the same page, avoids duplication, etc. For instance, in this case, would have saved Sam from repeating what Cecil arready said.
No biggie, I’ve provided the link, and you’ll know for next time.
Darn! Now I have to figure out if I just knew that on my own, or if I dredged up a memory, having read Cecil’s column previously. :smack:
CK -
I’m sorry, I’m not bright enough to know the method for inserting a link. I’m cultured, educated, erudite, sophisticated and a great dancer, but only a naive waif in this regard.
Re your name - To demonstrate my sophistication, I must submit that it should always be rendered thusly: c k Dexter-HAVEN! - Thereby giving proper due to Mr. Grant, Miss Hepburn, and of course, Mr. Barry.
Re Barns - You have an excellent point - maybe iron oxide was just cheaper. I’d like to know. They white-washed (lime washed) a bunch of stuff in them days, so I would think that would be pretty cheap too. It would make sense to paint the biggest expanse as cheaply as possible, but why not go cheap with all the rest, too?
Whoops - I also meant to offer a comment re Victorian houses. They were NOT painted with a limited pallet. As a matter of fact, they were known earlier in the 20th century as “painted ladies” because of their bright plumage. But anyway, this barn thing preceeds the Victorian era by at least some decades.
“pallette,” she corrected sheepishly.
You can insert a link into a post simply by copying the address of the page you’re linking to and pasting it into the post:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_382.html
If you want to get fancier, you can post this:
[url=http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_382.html]Why are barns red?
Which winds up as:
How elegant! Thanks.
I believe you’re thinking of Victorian houses in town. (Like the well known ‘painted ladies’ in some sections of San Francisco, for example.)
But houses on a farm would usually be painted white (or whitewashed). The barns would generally be red. And other, smaller buildings? Actually, whatever color you happened to have enough left over for the building. Most farmers don’t have any great attachment to a specific color for outbuildings. But they do have a real attachment toward saving money. (Otherwise they don’t last long as farmers!)
That only works for one url per post. Multiple urls require quotation marks (e.g.: [url=“http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_382.html”]Why are barns red?) or the software won’t parse them correctly.
In northern New England, the tradition is a yellowish beige, from a milk-based paint.
A little European perspective for y’all 
… ‘Suffolk Pink’ was (and is) a traditional colouring, which used pig blood in whitewash. Many of the immigrants of New England were from East Anglia, including Suffolk, so it would hardly be surprising if that tradition was continued in America. Whether this is enough to explain a nationwide red-barn epidemic, I can’t say 
(There’s a good picture of houses in Suffok pink in the middle of this page)
Seems unlikely to me.
Midwestern farmers had much better uses for pig blood, like blood sausages, blood pudding, etc.
Besides, iron oxide was readily available, and really cheap.
Which would explain the change from one to the other, no?
Hmmm…
Why are barns red? is a column on The Straight Dope. You can discuss the column at the Straight Dope Message Board. Here are some pictures of red barns.
They all seem to work OK sans quotation marks. Perhaps there was some bug in an earlier version of the software, and you’ve just been putting in the quotation marks out of habit even after it was fixed.
In Charleston, SC, many older buildings were painted shades of pink, yellow, beige, etc., because the early settlers were Hugenots who first emigrated from France to the Barbados, and those tinted colors were de rigeur there. Rainbow Row on East Bay has a whole street with adjoining buildings so painted.
Why were barns painted red? For the same reason little 'ol schoolhouses were.