Selecting Paint Color
Choosing the right color for your home Exterior is not an easy task. We're here to help with our few helpful tips
If your home has existing stone or brick areas that won’t be painted, your stone or brick has more of a say in your home’s exterior colors than you do.
The first step in choosing exterior paint colors is to take these non-painted surfaces into account, no matter how little you pay attention to those areas ordinarily. You’ll do this by determining the “undertones” of those natural materials. Undertones can range from pink-beige to blue-gray to taupe. Whatever those undertones are, you need to know them so you can design your paint color to coordinate.
Even if you love bright colors personally, go with a more muted color on your home exterior.
Why? Because unless yours is a beach house, or one of San Francisco’s historic Victorian “painted ladies”, bright or saturated colors on an exterior can look artificial, unnatural, even tacky.
If you want a white or off-white home, you won’t get to pick an actual bright white.
A common mistake is to pick a color that is too light. Colors look MUCH brighter when seen outside. Hold a piece of paper outside in the bright sunlight and it’ll be almost blinding. You don’t want your house to look like a giant reflector. A good rule of thumb is to pick a color that is two or three “steps” farther down, on a fan deck, from the top of the paint strip. The pretty white homes you see on Instagram or Pinterest are most likely painted in a beige, “greige” (grey-beige), or creamy color.
If you love cool colors like gray, you’ll probably pick something much “warmer” than you expect.
I also love gray, but most of the time, when people go to the paint store for samples, they pick a gray that is too cool, too blue. Natural sunlight already has a very cool color temperature to it. It’ll “cool down” any color that you see outside, so you need to compensate by picking a color that’s much warmer than you’d expect.
A word about testing your colors...
Get at least three sample colors and paint them on poster boards. Carry your boards outside and prop them up vertically, in both shade and full sun, to evaluate them. And be sure you hold them right up against your brick or stone! You want to see how well your sample colors interact with your fixed natural elements. Too many homeowners paint a swatch of the test color on their existing stucco or wood siding, right in the middle of the wall, rather than against the edge of the brick or stone area. Your stone or brick has veto power over your body color. You must consult it, so to speak, when picking your paint color.
WE CHOOSE SHERWIN WILLIAMS PAINTS
Sherwin Williams paint is thick because it uses more solids, which makes it easier to work with and will cover more surface area. Furthermore, most surfaces can be completely covered in one to two coats. It a is HIGH QUALITY paint.
Explore interior and exterior paint colors by color family or curated color palettes to get inspired.
Sherwin Williams offers FREE Virtual Color consultation with their Color Experts.