Dear Homework,
I like your column—you always suggest great ideas. We are getting ready to repaint our house. It is currently all white with slate-colored shutters. We are trying to decide if we should paint it a new color. My thought was maybe a cool dark gray/slate house with black shutters and white trim. Other options include keeping it all white but making the door and shutters black, or doing a Southern Living sage/tan color with black shutters and white trim. We really aren’t sure what the house style lends itself to.
Any thoughts you have would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
—Color Confused
Dear Color Confused,
Color can have a tremendous impact on the look and feel of a home. I show three different schemes, all of them united by leaving the existing white trim color alone. They are not exactly the colors you suggested, but it gives you somewhere to begin, and allows me to make some points of general interest to our readers.
scheme 1
By painting the shutters a bright dark green and the front door fire engine red, you lift the feel of the home. It goes from being rather drab to lively, and you have to paint almost nothing. This is a good option if all the paint was in decent shape, but you want to make a noticeable impact.
scheme 2
This version paints all the siding a dark charcoal gray. This might seem like a rather sinister idea, but with the white trim, it feels crisp and sophisticated. The black shutters and red front door add depth. I also could have seen the front door in yellow with this exterior color.
scheme 3
Here’s a color to brighten your day. The siding is a sunny yellow, and it almost seems like a different house than the first two. The shutters are (somewhat unusually) painted white, and the front door black. It almost looks like something you would see in a Scandinavian country. I think all three schemes look great, so there is really no right or wrong answer.
Thanks for asking
—Homework
[Homework is penned by Paul Doerner, Founding Partner of the Lawrence Group. If you would like your home critiqued, contact us at homework@townandstyle.com .]
