We Picked Our House Colors!

We Picked Our House Colors!

It took a while, but after a few months, tons of paint swatches on the back of our house, lots and lots of photoshopping, and all of your very helpful votes and opinions, we finally picked our new house colors!

If you’ve never repainted your house before, just go in knowing it’s HARD. We had a heck of a time with our last house, too. With a room, you can change your mind. It’s a pain in the butt but you can repaint it easily enough and only be out a hundred bucks or less. The exterior, though, whoa. First of all, it’s expensive, several thousand dollars, and second, everyone will see it! None of our neighbors know what color we painted our bedroom (unless they read our blog!), but they will allllll see the outside … and knowing our neighbors, they’ll all be gossiping about whether or not they like what colors we pick! So basically, it’s a ton of pressure to get it right, which means sample sample sample!

We put I think seven different paint colors on the back of our house (it looks crazy), but once we painted this collection  of light greys/blues it was immediately our favorite and instantly just felt right. Kind of like finding the perfect wedding dress. Without the tears. So from there we had to narrow it down, which was surprisingly difficult. We took into account lighting at different times of day, how the colors played with our neighbors’ houses (the neighbor on one side is white and the other is baby blue), and of course what you guys had to say.

And this is what we’ve picked:

We decided to go with Sherwin-Williams Misty for the siding. It’s a light, cool grey that’s neutral but with blue undertones. As someone commented, the neutral grey will allow other elements to pop, like our landscaping and front door.

For the brick, trim and garage door, we chose Extra White, which is a crisp white. We’ve read that painting a garage door the same color as the front of the house helps to make the house look bigger, which makes sense, and I like the idea of just sort of hiding it.

We decided not to go with pure black for the shutters, but more of a charcoal grey to keep the look a little softer and a little different from what most of our neighbors have done. Grays Harbor is the second darkest color on the same color strip as Misty. This is an excellent way to choose a complementary color that’s either lighter or darker than what you’re matching, because all of the colors on one strip are in the same family (contrary to what you may think, though, they’re technically not simply darker/lighter versions of the exact same color, but more like very close relatives). We also figure if we hate the shutter color, it’s definitely the easiest thing to change later if we really have to.

Here’s a quick Photoshop rendering I made of the colors on our house:

I almost don’t even recognize it! (But you could probably blame the Photoshopping for that, ha!)

Right now our front door is a bright turquoise color called Beach Sparkle by Valspar, and we’ll leave it as is until at least the rest of the house is finished. I’m pretty sure the current door will look fine with the new colors, but I fell in love with the idea of a minty green door after seeing how good it looks on grey houses like the one below. So consider the door TBD.

(Photo via Addison’s Wonderland. Door color: Waterscape by Sherwin-Williams; Siding color: Dovetail by Sherwin-Williams)

Our painter will be able to start in just a few weeks, so what will happen first… a painted house or a new baby?!

We’d love to know what you think of the colors we picked!!