The Secrets to COLOR SUCCESS
Making Intelligent Color Selection
Choosing the colors for your home’s exterior should be fun – but knowing where to start isn’t always easy. We created this color and design guide to give you a few ideas for putting together a great new look for your home. So sit back, relax, and most of all, be brave. Choosing color is easier than you think.
How to Use This Color Guide
Wolverine can help take the guesswork out of choosing exterior colors. We’ve put together some of the best siding and trim color combinations, and through this step by step guide, you will learn the steps to choosing your home's perfect color combination.
Tips to Get Started
Siding covers about half of the exterior of an average home, and it is the most important color choice you will make. Roof color has about 20% visual impact. Accent, shutter, door and trim colors are the details that complete your home’s look.
Also, your roof and any brick or stone accents can give you a place to start when choosing a color scheme. You may want to highlight your home’s best features with contrasting trim and corner posts to draw attention.
Gather Your Ideas
Look at magazines, or drive around your neighborhood to see what you like best. Keep notes or take photos or the colors you like and you'll begin to notice a pattern. This will be an important step as you narrow down your color choices. Having an idea of what colors you really like can make choosing your home’s exterior a lot easier.
Remember to Look at
Real Color Samples
Ask your contractor or builder to show you large samples of the colors you like best. It is also helpful to take samples outside to see how the color looks in natural light on all sides of your home. If your home has any brick, stone or wood accents, see how the sample complements or contrasts that existing building material.
Your Architectural Style
The first step is considering the architectural style of your home. Specific styles point to the use of appropriate color schemes. Non-specific styles may offer clues that can guide your color choices. Even if your home does not fall into a specific category or architectural style, see if you notice details that are reminiscent of a particular style. Selecting colors that are in alignment with those clues can give your home a sense of "rightness" or appropriateness of color selection.
Colonial Homes
These homes were traditionally painted all white, at a time when pigments were too expensive to be used on entire homes. You can never go wrong with a classic all white color scheme on a Colonial style home.
Cottage Style
These style homes leave rooms for more whimsical color schemes. This cottage-style home would feel fine in a neutral but it really comes to life with a cheerful color.
Craftsman Details
Details like gable brackets and window detail point to earthy color schemes.
Red is a great selection for a home where the porch details and rooflines suggest a farmhouse style.
If your home is without defining features that point to a particular style direction, you get to choose!
Craftsman and Bungalow
These styles originated in an era when earth tones were popular. As a result, these homes will always feel best in more muted schemes.
Know Your Surroundings
Next step is to look around you and see what is going on in your immediate surroundings. If you live in a densely built community, it is preferable to not repeat a color that appears too close to your home. If there is a blue house across the street, it might be better to steer away from that particular blue. If you live in a more sparsely built situation, where your home is isolated from others, then you have more latitude when choosing a color.
Your Property
Now, let's consider the land your home actually inhabits. Are you close to the street or set back? Is the house small or large?
Color impacts how your home sits on the land. Light colors that stand out from the landscape can make your home look larger.
Geography matters, too! Do you live in a coastal cottage community or an area where craftsman style bungalows are nestled into a wooded environment? The surrounding landscape will give you clues about your ideal color palette.
If you'd like your home to settle, either into the landscape or away from the street, a darker color will help it recede.
Bright Colors
These colors will always draw the eye away from your surroundings, whereas colors that appear more neutral will provide balance between architecture and setting
Working With What You Have
It is important to analyze the fixed elements of your home's exterior when selecting color. Is there stone or brick on your facade and if so, what color is it? How about your roof? Will it need to be replaced any time soon or will you be looking at that color for along time?
We never see colors in isolation — it is always about the combination of materials, both color and texture. Decide whether you like your fixed materials and want to enhance them or whether you'd prefer to minimize their prominence.
Staying Put, or Ready To Sell?
How long do you plan to stay in your home? if you expect to be moving in a handful of years, you probably want to consider a more conservative color scheme. this does not have to mean boring, but it is wise to avoid colors that may feel too "out there" to potential buyers. remember that what feels popular now may feel dated in five years when it's time to sell.
A Classic Color Scheme
This may have broader appeal to more buyers. your new siding will last many years and if you plan to stick around, you have more latitude to have some fun and choose colors that express your personal style.
Finding Your Personal Taste
Now it is time for some soul searching about the colors that make you happy. Are your choices usually bold or do you feels more comfortable with quiet colors? The goal is to feel pleasure each time you arrive home and what makes you happy is a very personal decision.
Looking at other houses around your city or town, notice what feels right to you and what grates on your nerves. This may include the colors themselves, the number of colors used in a scheme, and the level of contrast between the body color and trim color. Considering those variables will help you refine your sense of personal taste.
Putting Color Theory Into Practice
Understanding a few principles about how color works will help you create an exterior color palette that fits with your architectural style and puts a smile on your face every time you arrive home.
It’s pretty obvious where certain colors can be found on the color wheel. But even colors we consider “neutrals” still belong to a color family on the color wheel. Understanding the underlying color of a neutral will allow you to combine colors with greater easeand help you avoid surprises.
Consider Your Roof Color.
Some roof colors lean a little orange and the siding you select may either intensify the tone of the roof color.
Notice how the Marine Blue, from the blue side of the color wheel, makes the orange roofing seem even more orange.
Whereas the Rustic Oak siding diminishes the orange appearance of the roof shingles because the siding color and the roofing color are from the same color family.
Here are Two Neutrals, Which Seem Similar at First Glance.
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They are both mid-tone neutrals and one might expect them to look roughly the same on their home. But if that home has accents of red brick, the end result can be quite different.
Tundra Moss, from the green family, will enhance the red tones in the brick because the two colors are from opposite sides of the color wheel. Instead of two seemingly neutral materials, these two "push" each other, potentially resulting in a pink and green house. It could be an appealing scheme for a cottage but not necessarily for a Craftsman bungalow.
Canyon Ridge, which is a dark beige, is actually a darker member of the orange family, so dark you can't even see the red. But when you pair Canyon Ridge with the red brick, the brick settles in and feels less bold.
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