Big wooden garden gates-paint?

[buckeejit]

I'm mid painting our massive wooden fence-we have recently had new gates put on at the end of the back drive. They look exactly like this. While the wood is nice & new looking at present, it probably won't be in a year or so. I think we should just paint them in the black stuff that's going on the fence. Dh isn't sure. Wwyd?

We used to have similar gates and we painted them.

However if you want to keep the wood colour why not clear varnish them?

I wouldn't leave them bare and untreated. How you paint them is a personal choice though, I'd go for a wood preserve /stain one like Cuprinol personally.

The fence on the other side of the gate posts was old patchy brown & now it's clean black so the gates look a bit stand outy to me. I think I'd be more inclined to go for bare wood varnish if there wasn't the fence