The color of your home exterior is a major player in its curb appeal. Choose the ideal one, and you’ll be thrilled each time you lay eyes on your house. But picking the optimal siding color isn’t quick or easy, so buckle up and take the time you need to explore your dream colors, evaluate your options, and educate yourself on how hues impact your curb appeal.
Choosing your house’s color is a process, and well worth every moment you invest in it. So grab a coffee, sit back, and let’s begin the journey together. You’re going to love the results!
Explore Your Dream Colors
When choosing a color scheme for your home exterior, you’ll actually need to pick three hues. The main one will be the most obvious and will cover the body of your home—your siding color. Next, choose an accent shade for pillars and trim. This is often either a stark contrast (dark, bold colored siding with white trim), or it is a lighter color in the same family as your siding. Finally, choose a hue that pops for your door and shutters. This one brings cohesion and balance to your exterior design.
Blue
This quickly rising-in-popularity hue delivers a calming effect as it makes most of us think of the ocean, our vacation, and tranquility. With all the chaos going on in the world, it’s pretty awesome to come home to a peaceful house, and blue siding delivers!
White
A white house never goes out of style. Its crisp, clean feel provides a refreshing vibe you’ll love coming home to. It is perfectly set off by bold colors like black, charcoal, or even red. It works well on various home styles, making it an ideal choice.
Gray
Gray comes in a host of shades, each with their own unique personality. It’s been trending, and doesn’t appear to be declining one bit, so go for it if gray is your desire! Gray is a neutral that blends well with a wide variety of home styles and neighborhood types. It has modern appeal, looking chic on contemporary homes—yet it looks fabulous on traditional style homes too. You can add a pop of style with the shade of your front door, trim, and shutters, creating the perfect blend that satisfies your taste and adds value to your home.
Evaluate Your Options
Consider your neighborhood
When you’re choosing a siding color, begin by driving around your neighborhood. Take a look at the predominant colors used on homes like yours and in proximity to yours. While your home should be uniquely yours and satisfy your dreams, in general, you’ll want to choose a hue that fits in the palette of the homes around yours. (Hopefully your neighbors aren’t daring enough to paint their homes bright orange or deep pink.) Learn about the Homeowners Association’s rules or guidelines for exteriors and stay within the boundaries.
The size of your home plays into your options
If you live in a palatial home, trend toward lighter colors, as too much dark can appear depressing. If your house is modest in size, you have more options: a light color will make it appear larger, and a darker color can give it personality without being overwhelming.
Accent your exterior’s special features
When homeowners choose the same color for the body of their house as they do for window trim, they’re missing a great opportunity to create contrast that delights the eye. Windows are important features to accent, particularly if they are an interesting shape. A hexagon shaped window accented in crisp white, paired with dark colored siding, sets your home apart—in a good way!
Educate Yourself on How Color Impacts Curb Appeal
Your home’s siding color should match its style
If you live in an artsy Craftsman home—with tapered columns, patterned windowpanes, and a covered front porch—an earthy color palette is often ideal, emphasizing harmony with surrounding landscaping.
Stately Colonial homes—with their square or rectangular façade, a central entrance, and windows symmetrically placed on both sides of the front door—look fabulous in a shade of white (there are tons!) or cream.
And Victorian houses—with their two to three stories, complex rooflines, gabled roofs, and round towers—offer the opportunity for a pastel palette.
Your siding color should be compatible with your roof
If siding and roofing colors don’t work well together, a home looks off-balance. When choosing a siding color, you need to work with the fixed elements that surround your siding to ensure cohesion in your overall design. And one of those fixed elements is your roof. Take its color, texture, and style into consideration when you decide on a siding color. From the curb, siding and roofing hues should be complementary.
Your house’s landscaping should work well with your siding visually
Take a look at the trees, shrubs, and flowers around your home. When choosing a siding color, select a primary shade that will pair well with your landscaping. If you don’t have a lot of foliage around your house, a soothing earthy palette may be your best siding color choice.
Take the Journey with Craftsman Exterior Remodeling
When you’re in the market for new siding, the style, material, and color all impact your final outcome. And choosing each of these is vital to your long-term satisfaction. While it may feel overwhelming initially to make decisions on siding that will last over 50 years—like James Hardie siding—the good news is that you don’t have to tackle these choices alone.
At Craftsman Exterior Remodeling, we love listening to your home exterior makeover desires, educating you on some options, and guiding you toward the perfect solution to match your vision. Take some time to dream a little, and while you do, view our gallery to see some of the possibilities for your home’s siding services.
