I'm really not sure what to do about exterior color. I really was thinking red with white or off white trim, and after advice from Stephanie (check out her blog here), I bought a quart of Roycroft Copper Red from Sherwin Williams. I slapped it onto a part of the house (over top of some of the paint that's aligatoring) just to see if I like it. It is one of Sherwin Williams' Arts & Crafts colors, all of which I like. I love that Sherwin Williams sells cheap quarts of paint so that you can see if you like it before you commit to ten gallons.
Anyhow, I'm crazy about the color in general, but I don't know if I'll be happy with it covering large chunks of my house. I might switch to the terribly-named Bunglehouse Grey from SW's Arts & Crafts collection with white trim and either the above red or Roycroft Bottle Green for a highlight color. This is all causing a ton of anxiety.
By the way, the top picture shows you just how bad the paint is now. My painter assures me it'll look amazingly better when he is done.
Any feedback is appreciated.
1 comment:
Hi! Oooh - I really love that red! But that's just me. I can understand how it might be scary to commit to such a strong color.
The gray you mentioned would provide enough of a contrast to work well with a white or off white trim color. And I think that Bottle Green would make a lovely accent color. (It would be a nice accent for the red too though, if you're feeling really adventurous!)
Do you have/know how to use Photoshop? If so, I think it might help you out a lot. You could use it to try out different paint schemes on a digital photo of your home to see how the house would look painted several different ways before committing to a color scheme and buying gallons of paint.
Since your house is already white, there's a low-tech way of doing the same thing. You could paste a photo of your house into a Word document and print it out on paper, either in color or as a black and white document, or you could just make several photo copies of a photo of your house. (You would probably want the photocopies to be a bit underexposed so that the photo isn't too shadowy and just keep in mind that if you make a black and white photo copy, the finished product will look somewhat fake, since your vegetation will all be black and white too.)
Once you have your photos printed out on paper, just use markers to color your house the way you are thinking of painting it and see what you think. I think your best bet would be Prismacolor watercolor markers. You can buy them at any art supply store. They are a little pricey, but you don't need to buy too many of them - just a few in colors similar to the paint colors you are considering. They are ideal for doing something like this because they give a watercolor effect (they are translucent - you will still be able to see all of your home's detailing through the color wash) and because architects and designers use them to create renderings, they are available in lots of natural-looking colors that look like paint, stain and stone. The other thing that's nice about Prismacolors is that they have a tip on each end - a fat tip and a skinny tip - you can use the fat tip to color in big sections of wall and the skinny tip for detailing. I think they're usually about $2.50 apiece. Just bring your paint sample swatches to the art supply store with you to choose the markers which most closely match your paint colors.
Here's what they look like: http://www.jerrysartarama.com/discount-art-supplies/online/681/art-supplies/4
Hope this helps a bit!
Thanks so much for the plug of our blog. Oh - that reminds me. In case you were wondering if you should take color advice from some crazy lady who would choose the toxic pink paint color that's currently pictured on the front page of our blog, we have a four year old daughter and told her she could pick any color she wanted for her new bedroom. That *HOT PINK* is the color she chose. Not my first choice (Ha - not by a long shot! Typically, my color choices are a bit more mellow: http://www.localcolorstudio.com/portfolio.htm) but I figure, if you can't have a hot pink bedroom when you're four years old, when can you???? :-)
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