What kind of vinyl are you considering? Is it solid like Azek or is it hollow like vinyl siding?

I actually dont know. I think it is by Mastic, the Carvedwood2 brand.

I believe most vinyl is paintable, though you have to use a special paint.

But I wouldn't, unless the blue is going to go with the colors of the house much better than would white. A sky blue ceiling isn't going to actually fool anyone, so it seems silly to try.

Here is a thread on "Haint Blue".
I have the vinyl bead board on our porch ceilings and sometimes wish it were Haint blue. I see it on so many porch ceilings in Charleston and Savannah.
Sorry, I am not more help.

Here is a link that might be useful: Haint Blue

If you are still considering wood, I have a wood porch ceiling painted blue with white trim boards covering the seams. Not sure of the terminology.

I would use solid 1/2" thick PVC beadboard (Azek, NuCedar, etc.) and paint it whatever you want. I think it's important to be able to change the color of the different elements of your house. Is the porch so large that cost is a problem?

Will the siding be standard vinyl imitative clapboard? If so, you might want to consider an upgrade to NuCedar. If you want to paint it use the smooth version.

Here is a link that might be useful: convincing PVC imitative siding

Thought the haint blue would be 'h'aint blue', as in, 'is white'!!
Nevermind--I'm suffering from holiday brain--

The blue color is used on ceilings in the N.O. area to discourage spiders, etc from making it home.
The idea is to make the ceiling appear as sky rather than an inviting nesting place.

I'm not going to be of any help to you. Sorry, but thanks for sharing the post and the pictures. Up here in the north, I had no idea why you'd do such a thing, but now I get it. Very nice Southern touch and I can see why it's an important feature for your home. Don't give up on it. I'm sure you can get it to look how you want.

Many Northern houses do that too!
Not just a Southern thing....

it is one of those detail that always catch my eye.
I like the light blue porch ceilings.

best of luck.

A "haint" is a ghost from the word "haunt." In Charleston, SC and the surrounding low country in the old days, black people frequently painted their door frames and window frames blue to keep the haints out. Charleston aristocrats painted their porch ceilings blue, and the ceiling paint came to be known as haint blue.

We have the white vinyl beadboard and I'm right outside of N.O. I didn't have a choice so I took the white.

Boy this thread brings back good memories. My great aunt's house in Forest Mississippi had the haint blue porch. I'd heard the same stories about it keeping spiders away.
The family had come to Mississippi before the civil war from South Carolina. The old folks would still talk about ancestors from SC like it was "the old country".

I remember them specifically talking about the blue porch as a holdover from those days.

I am trying to build a new "Old" house. We are just now rebuilding from Katrina, and I want the new house to look like it had been there forever. I dont want it to scream "New Construction".... The character of the city is being lost everytime they tear down one of the older houses.