The color that you choose for the exterior of your home will affect the resale value of your home. Zillow and other real estate companies often do research and analyses to determine which colors increase or decrease the value of your home.
Not only that, but the color of your home will affect your own mood as well. If you love how your home looks, you will love coming home to it after each time you leave. Your home is your sanctuary and should be a place of harmony and peace.
Read on to learn more about choosing colors for your home’s exterior.
Planning
Failing to plan is planning to fail. If you’re going to be heading up this project, make sure to check the weather so you don’t get caught finishing up your trim right before a thunderstorm.
There’s not really any rule here, but just imagine when you hear the weather report, instead of a 30% chance of rain, think 30% chance of doing all that work twice. And for your neighbors sake, don’t paint in the wind.
Water-based latex paint is hands down, the easiest paint to clean up. From accidentally painting the wrong section the wrong color to spilling a quarter gallon on the sidewalk, latex paint is going to dry faster, clean up easier, and look just as good, if not better than an oil-based, solvent-required, alkyd paint.
The latex paint is also going to hold up better because of its resistance to UV damage. Outside these smaller details, the colors you decide to use are going to be the biggest decisions, obviously. There’s more to consider in that area than most people are aware of until a mistake is made.
Once you get your home’s exteriors painted, call Birdseye Construction to find out how we can improve your home’s interiors as well.
Color Rules
The Color Wheel
Technically, color exists as a wavelength of light being reflected off a surface of an object. That’s pretty technical for selecting a color for the exterior of your house, so let’s break that down a bit to further understand the dynamics at play here.
If a Pink Floyd album is the only experience you have with light refracting through a prism, you’re probably thinking closer along the “color” rules than the rest of us. A glass prism just happens to be the perfect shape to disperse a wavelength of light into the individual colors on a color wheel.
The color wheel is where we get our rules from. Keep in mind the three primary colors are red, blue, and green. That means all other colors are a collaboration of different amounts of these three colors. Easy enough, right?
If you’ll notice, on the color wheel, these three colors line up across from one another, in a triangular pattern. The handy thing about that is shifting one color to either side of either of these three colors and those are your secondary and tertiary color schemes.
The most basic thing to retain from this is that we build color schemes based on the position of a color on the color wheel. From the color wheel and the location of each color, we can build monochromatic, analogous, complementary, and triadic color schemes.
Monochromatic color schemes are ones that only differ from one to the next slightly, shaded lighter or darker than the one before and next. Analogous color schemes venture out a bit further than that and are created by colors next to one another on the color wheel, differing more than just a shade darker or lighter.
Complementary color schemes use two colors that lay directly opposite one another on the color wheel. The fourth basic color scheme is triadic and that’s a color scheme that uses three evenly spaced hues on the color wheel.
The Color Selection Process
With all that color science on the table, we can begin to narrow down our options and focus on what’s right for your house. There are still some other rules of thumb to go by when selecting the paint color.
Roofing
Depending on some static fixtures such as roof and window color, we might be limited. Brown roofs look best with beige color walls and black windows or black trim is going to go best with gray color schemes.
Brick
If part of your exterior features bricks, you’ll want to be extra mindful of how you approach your paint color choice, even more so if you plan on painting those bricks. Proceed with caution here and don’t be afraid to bring in an expert, a contractor to consult on the specifics of your home and explore the options with someone who does this for a living.
60-30-10
While this rule usually applies to the interior of the home, utilizing it when making external color scheme decisions will result in a cohesive, well-put-together exterior. The idea is to choose a dominant color, plan on using this to cover 60 percent of your home’s exterior, it will be the main color.
The second color, the 30, will be used on doors, trim, and window treatment. The last 10 percent will be used sparingly, as an accent color. Maybe a mailbox, or porch fixture. Where some homeowners go wrong is using this accent color on a fixture such as an air conditioning unit, which would be better off colored in the 60 percent color so as to blend it in and not have it stand out.
Bold Doors
Recently it’s become trendy to use a bold color on the front door, this is a great idea and often has a bigger impact than initially imagined. Anything to make your home your unique space or stick out in the minds of potential buyers is a good thing, when done in moderation.
Neighborhood Vibe
When selecting these exterior colors, be careful not to become too eccentric. Houses that are too loud, and use exotic colors could cause a stink. HOAs usually have guidelines and regulations as to what colors are appropriate in your area and what colors are forbidden.
If all else fails, try and stick with what seems to be the trend for the houses around you. Drawing unnecessary, unwanted attention is definitely not the goal here and there is a line between that and expressing and enhancing the unique characteristics of your house.
Looking for other ways to renovate your home? Check out this article titled, “How Do You Modernize the Exterior of a Ranch House?”
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, now you’ve got some direction to follow in this important home enhancement. By following these simple guidelines and being mindful of how colors can enhance and affect the atmosphere outside your home, you should be able to put on a fresh coat of paint to entice those potential buyers or spruce up your forever home.
Call Birdseye Construction today to discuss how we can help make your home’s exterior standout.