Design Details: Choosing Colours For Exterior Woodwork & Walls
A few tips, ideas and inspiration for when you are navigating the minefield that is colour choice for the exterior of your home.
[cover photo credit: Build Green New Homes]
Painting the exterior of your home - whether it be render or woodwork - is a HUGE decision. It’s the first thing that people see when they approach your property and it’s important to get it right, not least because outdoor painting can cost an absolute fortune. Also, it has to be done properly. You can’t (as I have been prone to in the past) slapdash it out. The exterior of your house is subject to buffeting winds and extreme temperatures (especially if you live in the North of England as I do; we can flip from 8 degrees to 18 degrees within a 12 hour window) and the paint coverage needs to be applied professionally so it’s able to tolerate such madness without peeling or flaking. Which is why, if I’m being honest, I have always invested and recruited someone to do it for me (also, who wants to be a up a ladder? No thank you).
We recently moved from a 280 year old Georgian property. We’d been there for ten years and during that time, I had the windows repainted twice. The front of the house was unobstructed by anything bar fields as far as you could see and as a result, it had no chance whatsoever in the face of inclement weather. The building was brick, but there was a side extension that had been poorly rendered prior to our moving in. It lasted eight years before I went into the garden one morning to find that half of it had fallen off and was lying on the patio, thankfully narrowly missing Buddy who is more prone to sofa surfing than garden galavanting. The whole lot had to be removed and redone (I won’t tell you the cost but it involved cashing in my ISA) but most importantly, I had to decide on a colour. Render is super clever now - it can last for a couple of decades and is sprayed on which makes it much quicker to apply and therefore a less tedious and lengthy job. Plus, it comes in loads of different colours which means that you don’t have to paint it afterwards.
Anyway, it took me ages to work out the right shade to go for - my instant thought was white but I was swiftly deterred from this by Craig, the renderer, who said it needed to be softer else it would look like an office block. With his experience noted, I chose a warm cream that worked perfectly with the brick and transformed the entire side of the house into something that was more cohesive with the rest of the building. The extension was often in full sun which meant it needed a shade that didn’t bleach out and look too pale and it was important to ensure that it worked with what was already there. Getting it right is key when you’re embarking on such a huge task - it’s a costly business to swap it up once done. Anyway, it was all good and the house looked much improved, although I was much poorer.
But back to business and how to decide on exterior paint colours was a question posed by a subscriber last week in reference to a project she is currently undertaking in her own home painting outdoor woodwork. Issues that she has found when planning this include the orientation of the house (it faces in multiple orientations and therefore looks different at different times of the day) and matching the paint undertones to the the colours in the brick (or stone, in some cases). I’ve investigated into this subject in detail so let’s walk it through and see how we can plan properly to make sure we nail it.
This post is for paid subscribers but you can upgrade for the price of a coffee! You’ll get an eight extra posts every month plus my entire archive including tonnes of recipes and travel write ups. I would thoroughly recommend.