Help With Exterior Paint Colors

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Help With Exterior Paint Colors – The process seems dangerous:  What if your house looks colorful and (worse) people will see it? But what if it went from an “old, outdated wound” to an “expensive paint wound” and now you’ve run out of budget and it’s too late to change anything? Painting the exterior of your home is the most overt design decision you can make. What if the happy yellow that you once thought would be fun and unique now looks like neon and annoys your neighbors?

If thinking about choosing exterior paint colors makes you want to clean your gutters or tackle your taxes, you’re not alone. There are unique challenges in choosing the right exterior paint color. The surface area (the entire exterior of your home) is so huge that it’s hard to imagine the results of just tiny bits of paint or “exterior palette” brochures. This will cost you a pretty penny. Success or failure depends on the right choice of colors. And how can you judge and choose the right color when the polish colors look so different when out in direct sunlight??

Help With Exterior Paint Colors

Help With Exterior Paint Colors

[By the way, we’re going to talk about the dominant color, aka “body color” or “stage color,” of your home’s exterior. This is the color of the grout or wood paneling. The overall exterior color palette will also include colors for your wood trim (walls, baseboards, doors and windows) and possibly accents on the front door. But by far the hardest part is choosing the main color! Once that decision is made, the rest is easy.]

What Are The Best Exterior Paint Colors To Sell A House?

1. If your home has a stone or brick surface that you won’t paint, your stone or brick has more influence on the exterior color of your home than you do.

Like it or not, it’s true. Unless your home only has clapboard (or similar composite material), painted wood partitions, and no other materials, your options are limited by painted unpainted materials. Use in the front of your house.

Many houses have all sides of the house clad in brick or stone, or possibly the lower half, or perhaps just some of the entrance columns, sheathed with local stone. (By the way, we use “natural materials” here to describe stone, but our color guidelines apply even if your home is manufactured or treated stone.)  If Your home is more modern, possibly with lots of unpainted concrete or even steel areas. Whatever paint color you choose, you MUST “play nice” with these materials!

This is similar to choosing the right paint color for kitchen cabinets. Unless you’re undertaking a complete renovation, you should consider your kitchen’s existing materials, such as stone or tile countertops.

Tips For Choosing Exterior Paint Colors

So the first step when choosing exterior paint is to consider these unpainted surfaces, no matter how little you usually pay attention to these areas. You will do this by determining the “tones” of these natural substances. The tones can range from pink-beige to gray-green to dark brown. Whatever these tones are, you need to know them to design a suitable polish. Otherwise, your freshly painted exterior will look like a confusing mix of vibrant colors. (Unfortunately, it’s easy to find a real-world example of this.)

We’ll cover this in detail in our post on determining shades in exterior paint colors. If you’re ready to start painting your home, read this post! But in short, your stone or brick will fall into one or more of the following neutral tones.

You can see one or two of these tones in the upper color range. This is not an exact science! Many colors seem to be in the middle. But you just have to get into the right undertone. Remember, we always look at colors in the context of the things around them. Place two colored icons side by side and one will appear “bluer” and the other “pinker”, “cooler” or “warmer”, “bluer” or “yellow”. Being able to determine the tone of your brick or stone with relative confidence will help you make the right paint color decision.

Help With Exterior Paint Colors

By the way, the info on this tone is from nationally renowned color consultant Marie Killam, who wrote a great blog on choosing the right exterior color to match your stone or brick. (Our color consultant for Paper Moon Painting has been trained by Maria Killam.)  If you’re not familiar with detecting background tints, her blogs can be a little more technical. technical, but they give some great examples of what we’re talking about. Here are some favorites from her archive:

Explore Paint Colors For Houses

Don’t skip this step! Follow the instructions in our post on how to identify shades in exterior paint colors. Remember, the only thing you can’t change is the tone of your puzzle pieces. Unless you’re doing more than just painting, such as replacing your existing stone or tile, you should design your exterior color scheme with that in mind.

How about painting your stone or brick? Unless your house in Ireland is whitewashed, you will rarely see a painted stone house here. You can paint small accents on the stone so they don’t limit your color choices, but I would be careful when painting the entire house. But bricks are another matter. Exterior tiles are painted all the time and have been around for centuries. We’re huge fans of painted brick houses, having done quite a bit on our own. Here is our article on whether you should paint your brick house or not.

Once you’ve narrowed down the tone you’re working with, you can pick a few possible color options and try them out. You don’t have to choose the same color as your brick or stone, but your paint color should be the same tone or tone as your brick or stone.

2. Even if you yourself prefer bright colors, choose darker colors for the exterior of your home… .

The Top 2023 Exterior Paint Color Trends To Try On Your Home

Why? Because unless your house is on the beach or one of San Francisco’s historic Victorian “Painted Ladies,” bright or saturated exterior colors can look artificial, unnatural, even sticky.

Once you know the tone of the stone, you can decide which neutral color will go well with it. It won’t be a strong color! A beach house might go well with turquoise or mint green (especially with lots of contrasting white decorations), but otherwise you probably wouldn’t choose bright colors for the exterior. my house. Even if you love color, neutrals are your best bet nine out of ten times. Save the accent color for your front door! The neighbors will thank you.

This is even true of old neighborhoods that are “boho” or “modern nostalgic,” like some of Austin TX’s quirky favorites. The house can have a bright pink front door (we painted the front door “fancy pink” on an iconic East Austin home and love it), and the rest of the house will have a bright pink front door. pale white or neutral gray or light brown. A bold homeowner might paint a small cottage avocado green with a bright yellow front door, but it would still be a more neutral, pale green version (as opposed to emerald green, for example). ). Choose a calm color for the exterior, preferably a neutral color!

Help With Exterior Paint Colors

I personally like a pink house, but this is too cool and bright. It needs to be softer and warmer like this, which is also much more authentic to the Spanish Mediterranean style of the house:

Picking The Perfect Exterior Paint Colors

Understand what I mean? It is a subtle but important difference in the facade of the whole house. By the way, this house doesn’t have too many natural, unpainted materials, but it does have a few things:  classic red tile roof and Saltillo terracotta brick in the front. Which of the three exterior color options best suits these fixed elements? Only the second image (the hottest option) is true tonal match.

3. If you want a white or off-white home, you won’t be able to choose true sparkling white.

A common mistake is choosing colors that are too bright. Colors look MUCH brighter from the outside. Hold the newspaper in the bright sunlight and you will almost go blind. You don’t want your home to look like a giant spotlight.

A good rule of thumb is to pick a color two or three “steps” below, on the fan panel,  from the top of the color bar. The gorgeous white houses you see on Instagram or Pinterest are most likely painted beige, gray, or cream. Here are some examples from our work:

Best Exterior Paint Color Combinations

It’s amazing how different these colors are outdoors, isn’t it? All of these houses are “white” although the following colors are used:

I also like gray (the entire interior of my house is painted in Sherwin Williams “Agreeable Grey”), but most of the time when people go to the paint store to sample, they pick a gray too much.

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