In many cases, the exterior of historic wooden temples and shrines are painted in minium color. Traditionally, the paint is a mixture of minium, or red lead, and animal glue. Because of low durability of animal glue as a binder, the buildings should be repainted quite often, especially when they are located in severe environmental conditions. Substitutions of a more durable material for animal glue have been considered and actually tried to some extent. However, there are few systematic studies on the characteristics of such new paints. Therefore, an experimental test was carried out. Some 17 kinds of paint, divided into three types, were tested. Those types are a mixture of animal glue and minium, a mixture of synthetic resin and minium, and a mixture of synthetic resin and pigment other than minium. They were painted on wood pieces (15 x 6.5 x 0.5 cm); then the test pieces were artificially deteriorated in a weatherometer for 3,000 hours. The following findings were obtained: 1) the paint layer, which consisted of animal glue and minium, exfoliated very easily; 2) synthetic resin was by far a more durable binder than animal glue; 3) paint which consisted of synthetic resins and minium showed serious fading and color change, particularly blackening, however, the paint which consisted of synthetic resins and pigment other than minium showed little fading and no color change; 4) priming was effective for stabilizing the paints to a greater or lesser extent. An outdoor exposure test is now underway using the same kind of test pieces. Better consideration can be made in the near future after the test results are known.