A windowing system for an electronic device that uses an electronic paper display may include a compositor, a frame buffer, and a display controller manager. One or more applications running on the electronic device may request multiple changes to windows. The compositor may determine multiple update areas, where an update area indicates the smallest area of the electronic paper display that should be updated as a result of changes being made to a window. The update areas may be stored in the frame buffer. The display controller manager may create a cumulative update area based on the update areas that are determined between a begin update instruction and an end update instruction. The display controller manager may instruct a display controller to update only the portion of the display corresponding to the cumulative update area.