3 Steps to Easily Select Your Home's Exterior Paint Palette
I recently had clients who were building a new home. She was in love with a wood-stained front door that she found online. She wanted to pick a paint color palette based upon that, as well as other images on her Pinterest board. The home they planned to build had corbels and posts that would stained in her favorite color, Sherwin Williams Crossroads. Here was the dilemma…she and her husband chose a fiberglass door, which meant we needed to pick a paint color that would match with a the chosen stain. Our search began, and it wasn’t easy. Here are three steps to (rather) easily build a great color palette for your home's exterior. Big Tip: This works in every room inside as well!
Photo: Bria Hammel Interiors
STEP 1: FIND AN INSPIRATION PHOTO FOR YOUR HOUSE COLORS
The clients had this one nailed! Not only did they have an inspiration photo for the front door, they also had a photo of the home to be built. This helped us know exactly where the stain color would be applied. It also gave us the potential to envision the roof shingle color, window frame color, and any additional accents such as shutters, lighting, etc. The body of the house was board and batten, and they wanted a soft white house. No stone or brick was involved here.
STEP 2: CHOOSE THE STAIN COLOR THAT MATCHES THE INSPIRATION
Matching a stain color to an inspiration photo is not really that difficult because there are not thousands of stain colors by company. Since we didn't need to match brick or stone, we used the shingles and the stain color as our jumping-off point. Next, we selected the body of the house color - a soft Alabaster white. Easy so far, since a creamy soft white pretty much will match any wood tone.
STEP 3: SEARCH PAINT COLORS AND INSERT THEM ON A DESIGN BOARD
Now the harder part began - finding trim paint and front door paint that would coordinate with Sherwin Williams Crossroads stain. This is where having a design board (or mood board) is KEY. Upload the inspiration photo(s) to the board. Grab a paint deck and start finding paint colors that are as close as possible to the stain color. It takes a while to weed out even the ones that you think might work. Undertones are very tricky, and you don't want to make a costly mistake. For example, a brown with a pink undertone will look terrible next to a stain with gold undertones. We finally found an almost-perfect paint match to her stain color. Once you have all of this, pick a coordinating paint color for the trim (fascia, soffit, etc.) if you want to introduce another color.
Once the design board is created with all of the colors (and names of them), it’s easy to see the plan and move forward with it.
I strongly encourage you to upload all these selections in one place. Only then will you really be able to decided if everything works together well. The two boards in this post are samples of what I do for clients through e-design. See how the "paint spots" very closely match the stained beams, wood doors, and/or posts? That is what we are looking for. Interested in the these paint colors? Contact me to get started.
If you're ready for some help bringing your dream home to life, come talk to me! I can't wait to work with you.
Until next time,
