One way of boosting your home’s curb appeal is creating unique, attractive, and inspiring exterior colour schemes. That is why it is important to learn how to pick the right outdoor paint for your home’s style and architecture from the thousands of exterior paint colours and types available.
Just like any other home remodelling project, your exterior painting project needs to be durable, sustainable, skillfully done, and within a reasonable budget. If you are unsure of the right exterior paint colour for your home, this post will walk you through five expert tips for choosing the right paint colour combination for the exterior of your home.
Be guided by your geography
Whether you are going to choose dull or bright outdoor colours will be determined by the geographical characteristics of your region. In the tropics, for example, exteriors are dominated by bright, playful, and cheery colours. Brown, green, and burgundy, among other nature-inclined colours, are dominant in the rustic mountains. Choose a colour that blends in well with your home’s geographical location because, as much as you’d want it to stand out, being the odd home in your neighbourhood isn’t a good way to stand out.
Consider your roof’s colour
If you have already painted the roof and you do not intend to repaint it soon, you cannot afford to ignore its colour when deciding the right outdoor paint for your home. Roofs painted black or neutral grey will go well with almost any colour scheme out there, so you could be in luck if your roof has either of these two colours. However, if you have any shade of red, brown, green, tan, or blue on your roof, you can be assured that the colours will clash if you aren’t keen enough. Blue-gray is also not as lucky as neutral grey. Here are your options if you fear that your exterior colour palette might clash:
- If yours is a dark brown roof, it is safe to choose true neutral colours for the rest of the home. Spice things up by painting the shingles with a red undertone.
- If you choose green or blue-grey for the roof, a colour that’s either neutral or has a slight hint of green or grey in it will blend in well.
Honour History
This has everything to do with the age of your home. If it is old, it is only fair that you choose a historically appropriate colour scheme. You will need to do a little bit of digging into the history of your home’s exterior paints if you are to pull this off. If you can afford to hire a pro to research on and recreate the original paint, the better for you! Your cheaper option would be to find out when the house was built and then refer to a historic colour chart for the most common colour palettes back when the house was built.
Consider your home’s architecture
People paint their home exteriors as a way of hiding architectural flaws. As much as that is acceptable, it is best, as much as possible, to allow your home’s architectural design to dictate how you play around with your exterior paint. If your home has a simple architecture, for example, don’t ruin everything by mixing too many exterior colour patterns. Think of a simple house in rural areas: Just two colours will do. However, if yours is an elaborate Victorian house style, anything less than five colours will seem off-touch. To give your house even a fresher look, set up some nice plants or flowers and put some grow lights over them, so they can grow faster.
Don’t limit your colour choices
Your exterior colour pattern should have a dominant field colour, a trim colour (for the doors, window frames, and other small exterior parts), and an accent colour for that bold, eye-catching feeling. You need to get your combinations right, but that doesn’t mean limiting your exterior paint to three shades only. You can have two field colours blending perfectly with multiple trims or accent colours. The more blended the colours, the more pleasing your home will be.
Conclusion
The exterior of your home is extremely versatile in colour selection. You should use that versatility to your advantage instead of cursing how hard it is to choose the right colour. Just be mindful of your surroundings - your roof, your neighbouring homes, your home’s architectural design and geographic location and you will certainly have the beautiful home that your family deserves.
Article contributed by: Lena Linetti
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Thanks Sarah.
These are some great information that you have shared here on how to chose the right outdoor paint for your home. I really loved it and thank you very much for sharing this with us. You have a great visualization and you have really presented this content in a really good manner. T
I smiled when I read this line, somewhat right “being the odd home in your neighbourhood isn’t a good way to stand out.” Very great ideas should be worth taking notes for my team. Thank you for writing.
Hi, Thomas here! I’m renting a house right now and I’m going to paint a few rooms, and decorating the walls! Thanks so much! I also love to paint, do you know that I’m just a painter who graduated in fine arts, currently working in the field of art, it’s a sickness! Love your blog, will add your inputs for my brain now! 🙂 Big Thumbs up on your post!
It’s a great source of knowledge;Thank you very much this is really helpful for me, thanks again!
What colour would you suggest with a WHITE roof? I have black aluminium windows. I didn’t know that choosing white roof would be a headache later on. And I don’t want to paint my house white.