Painting My House Exterior Colors – Are you having a hard time choosing the right exterior color for your home? I’m here to help you and walk you through every step of choosing the right color combination for your home’s exterior. I’ll make it easy for you, I promise!
The most common color question I’ve been asked over the years concerns choosing exterior paint colors, as this is one of the most difficult painting decisions you can make for your home. You want your home to have a beautiful appearance and you don’t want to make any color mistakes. If you follow my seven steps below, I promise you will avoid common mistakes and be able to make beautiful exterior paint choices! Stay true to me!
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Painting My House Exterior Colors
When deciding what color to paint the outside of your home, you should first choose a shade. When I say “shade” I mean: Do you want a light, medium or dark color for the body of your home? At this point, all you have to think about other than deciding whether you want a light or white color, a mid-tone or mid-tone, or a dark color.
Home Exterior Paint Color Ideas & Tips
For most of you, deciding on a color is immediately easy and you know straight away whether you want a light or dark home. However, some of you may be unsure and open to every shade and need a little help making a decision. If you look for inspiration for your home’s exterior on Pinterest, you can find out which shade suits your home best. For example, if you have a ranch-style home, search “ranch-style house exteriors” on Pinterest to see all the different color options that will inspire you.
Before you move forward with the color decision, you need to consider the color of your roof. If you have black or neutral gray, you don’t have to worry as much about color clashes. Unfortunately I have a dark brown roof with slight red undertones, so colors like green or blue undertones wouldn’t work for me and would clash. If you have a roof with shingles in shades of red, yellow, green, or blue-gray, it’s important to consider the color of your roof when choosing a color palette for your exterior paint.
If you’re like me and have a dark brown shingled roof with a red undertone, you’ll want to stick with a truly neutral primary color to ensure the safety of your home. If you have green or blue-gray shingles, you’ll have a little more leeway and avoid color clashes if you choose a color that’s either neutral or has a slight hint of your shingle color to complement rather than clash. If you have a black roof, you can do anything.
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If you have stone or brick in your home, you also need to consider the strong undertones that exist in your brick or stone. If your home is made entirely of brick and you only need to select one trim color, I will select either the lightest, medium, or darkest color of the stone/brick and use that as the trim color.
You’ll See These Interior Paint Colors
If your home is not entirely brick/stone, but is either half brick/brick or simply has brick/stone accents, you have much more leeway in choosing your home’s exterior paint color. As long as your body color has a very slight hint of brick/stone tone, you shouldn’t have any issues with clashes. For example, if your brick is a warm tone and you want to make your home’s body color gray, choose a light, warm gray instead of a cool gray. In this way, it is the warmth of the gray that connects or mixes the new body color with the brick. Makes sense?
Once you’ve thought about the color of your roof and decided on a shade, unlike choosing interior colors, you need to consider the effect of light on your exterior colors. I’ll save you a lot of time by telling you that daylight/sunlight will turn your exterior paint drastically cool/blue, which is what happens when there’s a lot of light. As crazy as it sounds, you need to make your exterior paint at least two to three times warmer to get a balanced color that’s neither cool nor blue. Let me show you what I mean.
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When it came time to paint the outside of our outdoor poolside kitchen, I had to choose a color that was actually about three times warmer than the color I wanted. I wanted a final color that looked like “On the Rocks” by Sherwin Williams, but due to the abundance of light affecting the exterior colors, I had to choose a color that was three times warmer to neutralize the color than blue or cool.
The Power Of Paint
Isn’t it crazy what light does to exterior colors? So when choosing colors, try colors that are at least one to two times warmer than the color you want to end up with. My final color ended up being three times warmer. Remember: If you want a white exterior, you will also need to choose a warmer white or your home will end up with a blue color.
When narrowing down your shade, consider the color of the roof and know that you need to go warmer due to the abundance of outside light. You then need to decide on the actual color for the exterior of your home. It helps to look for similar home styles to get an idea of the options. I have a Pinterest board here with all the exterior house colors that can really help you visualize the color.
Now that you’ve decided on a color, there are so many variables when it comes to the color’s effect on outdoor spaces, including the direction your house faces and how much shade your house has, that it’s impossible to decide. How to safely choose a body color without using patterns and patterns View your samples morning, noon and evening. This is an extremely important step, especially when choosing exterior colors, as the sun can produce strange hues that you may not see on a color chart.
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I tested several colors on my stucco wall to find the right color for my pool house and stucco wall. I was so surprised at how warm I must be. At this point, it’s important to do the same and test colors either on a billboard or directly in your home to be safe and get the exact color you’ll love for years to come.
The Biggest Mistakes I Made When Picking A Color And Painting The Exterior Of My Home
Once you’ve made a firm decision on your body’s main color, you can move on to choosing your exterior trim and accent colors. First, let me say that when it comes to choosing trim and accent colors, less is more! I can’t tell you how many times I work with clients who have a lot of architectural details on the outside of their home (earthquakes, shutters, lots of roof angle changes) who want to paint every detail a different color/hue because I think so will highlight the architectural details. However, too much contrast and changing colors/hues actually have the opposite effect and the eye stops at each color and no longer notices the architectural details.
Last year I worked with a couple who built a beautiful new home on a very wooded lot. They wanted the greenery of their house to harmonize with the trees. The house had many different exterior accents/elements including trim mixed with traditional trim, some dramatic changes in the roof angles, lots of wood trim, stone accents, etc.
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At first they wanted to paint all of these exterior accents a different shade/color and I encouraged them to to stick with one main body color and one trim color because then all those beautiful architectural elements would stand out more and not get lost in all the changing colors. What people also don’t know is that stained wood and stone are also colors.
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