Tips for Choosing Home Exterior Colors
Fresh paint color can transform your home’s exterior from worn or outdated to the house with the most curb appeal on the block. You can personalize your home and still work with your existing color by updating just the trim, doors or other architectural details, or if you want to avoid expensive re-siding, repainting your home will protect your siding and trim and give you a whole new look. This Ace Hardware video presents several tips for choosing home exterior colors:
Your home’s exterior is exposed to some pretty severe conditions such as sun, wind rain, snow and ice, so it’s important to use a high-quality durable exterior paint that will stand up to the elements.
Your approach to choosing color will be a little different from choosing interior colors, so here are some expert tips to help you.
When selecting exterior paint colors, one thing to take into account are any features you aren’t planning to change. Your colors need to work with your roof color and any decorative stone or brick work that you might have. If your roof has earthy color tones (for example, a red terracotta tile or brown shingles), a warm tone neutral will look better than a cool gray one, but on a home with a black colored roof, the cooler tones of blue or gray would work better than a brown.
Your exterior paint color should be consistent with the region and architectural style of your home. Draw inspiration from the surrounding landscape and even other homes in your neighborhood. You can never go wrong with earth tones that are specific to your region. For example, bright sunny pastels echo the beach sunsets and tropical flowers in a region like Florida. Moodier gray-blues and soft whites are stylish choices for New England coastal locations. A mossy green that will look beautiful on a craftsman-style home in the Colorado mountains might look out of place on a ranch style home in a southwestern state.
Accent colors are a great way to bring personality to your home without repainting the whole exterior. Keep in mind it’s a good idea to limit yourself to just 2 or 3 accent colors. Most homes have door and window trim and roof fascia which usually looks best when painted in the same color. You can add another color to highlight railings, shutters, stair treads or other decorative features you want to draw more attention to. Your entry door is a great place to use a bold accent color; this is one area on your home’s exterior where you can confidently use deep bright vibrant color.
Outdoor lighting can be particularly harsh and direct and can pull out undertones in your color that you might not have seen at the store, so it’s important to see how the colors will look in natural outdoor lighting during all different times of the day. Pint samples are the perfect way to test the colors you’re thinking about. Apply large swatches of these colors you’re considering. You’ll see how the color will actually look on your home, so you can make your color choice with absolute confidence.
