We did ours about four years ago and they've held up well. We used exterior semi-gloss paint, though, because we felt they needed to have some sheen.

I imagine the reason yours don't look as shiny is because of the flat paint. Do you like them with the flatter look? If so, you probably don't need to do anything more to them.

I've done searches on google about this, and there's always a different opinion. Same for Yahoo. Some said the paint I used was correct, others said I needed an acrylic/urethane mixed paint. Some said they would have primed.

I'm not worrying about them....they are going up AS IS..lol. Will see how they do :) Vinyl shutters are fairly inexpensive, and we only have 8, so we can always buy new ones.

Trying to figure out how to get the shutter locks off took awhile. We pried them out with a flat screwdriver just far enough to snip the head off of each one (this is something else we searched on google). Then we were able to remove the shutter. We used pliers to gently twist the "nail" part out of the siding (maybe we should have pushed them in instead of taking them out??) Don't know if how we did this was the best way or not, but we had to go to a hardware store and order new shutterlocks.

BTW, we didn't put these shutters up ourselves...we had a contractor put vinyl siding/shutters on our house about 15 years ago.

Since they're not hung yet, wouldn't it be OK to go ahead and apply a primer coat over the flat, then give it two coats of a satin or semi-gloss? ~Or~ leave as is and put a coat of Marine Varnish on them? My M-I-L painted her front door and then coated it with Marine/Spar Varnish, looked very pretty and the Marine Varnish offered some protection and gloss at the same time. Made the paint look much richer, too. Just wonderin'...

Yes, they'll fade. Even regular vinyl that are not painted fade. When we took down our burgundy vinyl shutters when getting ready to have new siding installed they had faded pretty badly compared to the back side of the shutters that were not exposed to sun.

Moonshadow, you're right about the regular vinyl fading. That's why we had to paint ours in the first place.

We didn't know about primers back then, so we just cleaned them up good and painted them. If/when we do it again they'll get a good quality primer coat first.

We painted ours in place, just taped a bit in areas where we were afraid of getting paint on the siding. DH was afraid he'd never get them back on after prying those plastic dealies off.

BTW, for anyone considering painting shutters, a little paint color tip: look at the paint strips outside when you pick the color. :) Maybe everyone but us would think of this! We wanted dark navy, so we picked what looked like a rich, dark navy on the paint chip.

After the first coat of paint went on, DH came inside and said "Do NOT go out there and look at them; I think it will dry down darker." Well, of COURSE I went out and looked at them. :) They were bright cobalt blue...eek!

We took the rest of the gallon of paint back to Lowes and had the guys add a ton of black to it and painted the second coat. Perfect dark navy, and a lesson learned.

LOL, sapphirestitch, great advice about checking the swatch outside first ;D

We painted ours in place, just taped a bit in areas where we were afraid of getting paint on the siding. DH was afraid he'd never get them back on after prying those plastic dealies off. Yeah, those plastic doodads are cheesy little things. About 25% of ours broke off when we took off the shutters. Should have kept them anyway and painted, darn it. We were going to just go buy new. It's been 4 years now, still no new shutters. So many projects, so little time...

moonshadow, if you don't clip the shutter locks off at the base of the head, then how are you going to remove the shutter? Did you just yank them of of the house (sorry, I don't mean to sound smart, I just can't figure out how you removed any of them without clipping the heads off). And if you did clip them off, how can you re-use them again? Don't they need to be all one piece? Looking at the ones we took out, they appeared to have been all one piece. Mine looks like a big plastic screw with the head being about 3/4" wide to cover the hole and give the shutters a decorative look. I could see nowhere where the head could be separated from the longer part without clipping the head off.

I will look into the marine paint. I really don't want to prime and paint again...ugh!

doing a search on how to remove vinyl shutters, I came upon one post where someone also called it a reversed barbed button lock. Does anyone know if these 2 are the same? Thanks

Why don't you just pick up a quart of satin or semi gloss in that same color and do one coat of that on the shutters before you hang them. You don't really need to reprime them...just paint one coat directly over the flat. At least then they will have some wearability and a little shine.