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blessedbe_gw

Exterior Colors- please help!

blessedbe
12 years ago

I own a home in the style now being called the American Small house. It was built in 1946 as factory employee housing. It is just 1000 sq feet, very boxy, with a small covered front porch. These houses are considered a cross between a bungalow and a ranch house. The siding is aluminum.

I am having the house painted. Currently it's a very, very light primer gray color with white trim (which contains lead paint, joy) and a red front door.

My favorite style of design is Craftsman. Obviously there is nothing I can do to make it a Crafstman style house, but I'm wondering if I could still pull from the color palette. The other houses in the neighborhood were all built at the same time and there are a lot of yellow and blue houses, mostly light shades. A few of the old houses have been torn down and Habitat for Humanity has rebuilt homes that are more the Craftsman style and some of them are darker, woodsy green, etx.

The painting company I am contracting only uses Sherwin Williams paint. I am pulled toward Sage or Recycled Glass colors, with a Blackberry front door. My concern is the size of the house. I've been told over and over again that the lighter the color, the larger the house seems. I don't want to go too dark, but I do want some color. Other colors I had previewed on the house are SW Camelback and Khaki shade. I find I don't care for them as much as I thought I would and there are quite a few other houses in the neighborhood with similar colors. I drove around this morning and didn't see any that were a sage tone....my goal is to mesh with the neighboring houses but still stand out.

Any advice on how dark you can go with a tiny house and whether or not a more Crafstman style scheme would work on a non Craftsman house? I would go with a lighter trim color, not darker. I have 3 huge water oaks in my front yard (west side of the house) so the street side doesn't get much sun at all.

BTW, this is a pretty run down neighborhood where I'm just glad that some of the houses have new paint jobs so I'm not particularly worried about resale value...although that's always at the back of your mind when you own a home.

Thanks everyone!

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