Resurface or repaint? How to read a court that is asking for help

Every spring I get the same call, and it starts the same way: "The court looks tired. Can you just paint it?" Sometimes the answer is yes. More often the court is telling you something a coat of color will not fix, and the trick is knowing how to read it. Here is how I walk a court, in the order I do it.

Start at the baselines

Stand at the net and look toward each baseline. On a hard court the color wears first where the players stand and turn: a half-moon behind each baseline, a strip along the service line, a patch at the center mark. When those zones have gone from blue or green to gray, the color coat is thin. When they have gone to black, the color is gone and you are looking at the resurfacer or the asphalt itself. Black means the court is past repainting; a color coat over bare resurfacer has nothing to grip and will be gray again in two seasons.

A worn zone with the color still intact around it is a court that can take a new color coat or two. A court that is gray everywhere, with no zone worse than another, has simply aged and is the same: color will do. A court with black showing anywhere needs the resurfacer back, and that is a resurfacing, not a repaint.

Rub it

Put your palm flat on the surface in a worn area and push. New acrylic has a grit to it, the sand in the color coat, and it will not come off on your hand. Old acrylic that is chalking leaves color on your palm: the binder has broken down under the sun and the pigment is loose. Chalking color cannot be painted over. It has to be pressure-washed off down to sound surface, and if that takes most of the color with it, you are resurfacing.

Then feel for texture. A court that has gone slick, where the sand has worn out of the surface, plays fast and dangerous in the damp; players slide. New color brings the texture back, but only if there is enough surface under it to hold the new sand.

Flood it

After a rain, or with a hose if you have one, look for standing water once the sun has been on the court for an hour. Puddles are called birdbaths in the trade, and the test is a coin: if a nickel laid in the water is covered, the low spot is deep enough to level; if a quarter is covered, it has to be leveled or the new surface will fail there first. A court with birdbaths is a court that needs patch binder before any color, which is a resurfacing step. A court that drains clean in an hour has a good plane and can take color alone if the rest checks out.

Count the cracks

Walk the whole court with chalk. Hairlines, the ones you cannot get a key into, can be filled with an acrylic filler and painted over, and that is a repaint with a repair day in front of it. Working cracks, the ones you can see the slab moving across, need to be bridged with a membrane, which means the surface around them is going to be rebuilt anyway. If there are more than a few of those, you are resurfacing. If the cracks run in a pattern, blocks or alligator skin, the base has gone and you are into an overlay or a rebuild; I have a separate article about why cracks come back that goes through that.

Ask how old it is

Acrylic color in Northeast Ohio sun lasts four to eight years before it wears through in the zones. A court painted five years ago that looks tired is behaving normally and needs color; a court painted two years ago that looks tired was painted badly or over something it should not have been, and painting it again repeats the mistake. A court that has not been touched in ten years is almost always a resurfacing, however good it looks from the parking lot.

What each answer costs

A repaint is a wash, a crack filler day and two color coats with new lines, and it is a fraction of a resurfacing. A resurfacing adds the membrane repairs, the leveling and the acrylic resurfacer coat, and takes about a week; it is the bigger bill and it resets the clock. The mistake I see most is the cheap one made twice: a repaint on a court that needed resurfacing, which looks good in June and gray by the second spring, followed by the resurfacing it needed in the first place.

The short version

• Color worn thin but no black showing, no chalk on your palm, no puddles, hairline cracks only: repaint.
• Black showing anywhere, chalking, birdbaths, working cracks, or a surface older than seven or eight years: resurface.
• Cracks in a pattern, heaves, a court out of plane: overlay or rebuild, and I will tell you which on the site walk.

If you are not sure, send me a photo of the worst baseline and a photo after rain. Those two pictures answer the question most of the time.