When I was looking at paint swatches for our exterior back in March of 2013, I knew I wanted to go grey. For all my new friends around, here’s a little backstory on my home. We bought our home eight years ago, and at the time it was literally all one color. Peach. When I say peach, I mean the entire house including trim was painted a horrible shade of peach.
The color peach on a house, just isn’t my jam. Less than a year after buying our home with my help from my Dad, my husband and I painted our home. We went from an all peach house to a medium light shade of grey with slightly blue undertones depending on the light. It was a huge improvement and gave our house a whole new look.
In the Summer of 2012, our house was badly damaged in a house fire (read more here) We spent the rest of 2012 and half of 2013 rebuilding our home. This time around, I knew that grey was going to be a go again, but this time I wanted to go darker and deeper, but I wasn’t 100% sold.
Before deciding on our paint color, we bought three paint sample in three colors: light, medium and med-dark grey. First we painted two different sections of our house with the paint to get a good idea how on the colors looked on our siding, in the front of our house we have both Hardie Plank Siding and Hardie Staggered Shingle Siding.
We looked at the paint colors at various times of the day. Seeing how the color looking in the morning, during full sun and at night, give us a better idea of what color we would like best. It's amazing how different exterior paint can look depending on the time of day.
Paint Coors below: Top Color - Elephant Skin: Behr Paint, Classic Sliver: Behr and Pier: Behr. After looking at the paint colors, I was most drawn to the darker grey color Pier, its such a pretty color that goes from medium grey to deeper moody grey depending on the time of day and weather.
Choosing our front door color was a much harder task. I kept going back and forth between aqua and chartreuse. I loved how the color chartreuse looked against our house color. However, I was scared of the color.
Scared it could go crazy wrong and look awful. Our old door was painted a safe red color, don’t get me wrong I love red doors...but knew the color was no longer ‘us.’ Below is our home before our front door was painted.
After going back and forth between aqua and chartreuse, I knew Antiquity from Sherwin Williams was The It color. I love how pretty the color looked with with the siding of our house. Plus I got the thumbs up for my husband, he loved the color too. When I told my sister our pick, she hated the color! She seriously thought we were crazy LOL.
FYI, my sister now loves our front door color! Quick reminder go with your gut even it if it seems scary + doors are always easy to repaint!
My Exterior Home Colors
Exterior Paint Colors: House Painted Pier - by Behr, Outdoor Planters Intellectual Grey - by Behr, Door Color Painted Antiquity by Sherwin Williams, Trim Painted Ultra White - by Sherwin Williams.
Tips on Selecting Exterior Paint Colors
- Drive around your neighborhood and look at houses that are similar in style to yours and take note of the colors that catch your eye.
- Create a Pinterest Board and pin exterior paint color combinations to help land on what's most pleasing to your eyes.
- Visit the Paint Selection at your local hardware store / or paint store and look through the exterior brochures. They often have a great selection of color ideas
- When looking at lighter paint shades, go a smidge darker - light colors will fade out in bright sunlight
- Buy paint samples, its much better to spend $20 on paint samples verses the cost of repainting your entire house if the color isn't right
- When testing out paint color swatches on your home, put swatches in a few spots to how the color looks depending the sun and shade the area gets
Tell me friends, what color is your front door and house? Are they colors you choose inheritaed with your house or colors you choose?
