HELP! what color to paint our house?

[Jack]

Season's Greetings!

We have lived in our [very linear] Pacific Northwest island semi-rural 28 year old rancher for just 4 years and have finally completed most of the outside structural repairs and renos ..mostly around back. Whew!

This Spring it will finally come time to paint so we've decided to do some advance preparation.

During those 4 years we agonized over what colors to paint the house and trim but with little consensus. We prefer the earth tones to harmonize with the surrounding vegetation [as well as the natural rock entranceway] and are open to any suggestions on a color scheme to use. We aren't adverse to other interesting color combinations.

If you are interested in putting some time into some selection of colors we would certainly appreciate your input. Some actual paint sample web links would be an obvious help.

To assist in the selection of a palate, I had taken some pix of the front of the house of which can be found here:

As the files are rather large, please wait a minute for the .jpg's to load. Also, the siding is cedar channel style and is primed ..no, it's not a weave as the pix might indicate. lol And, I've included a shot that was photo-stitched into a pan of the house. Not that professional but still hope the image will come across okay.

Need any more details? Please ask.

Thanks, Jack

[tbasc]

"Earth tones" leaves a lot of room for choice. Since this is important to you, I suggest a sample panel. We used a 48 inch square panel of plywood with siding and corner board applied. Small cans of paint are cheap and a panel this size gives a better sense of the final effect than a chip. The panel can be painted inside in any season and positioned to catch the sun for different wall orientations.

TB

[Red Neckerson]

Paint it red........definitely red.........

[David Martel]

Jack,

Your link isn't working. As someone else suggested get a bunch of pint cans in various colors. Paint the back of the house near the ground, near the trim with these samples. Invite your friends over for a cook out and get their opinions and votes. Then ignore all of that and paint it to please yourself. This Winter go to the library and flip through the house painting/home decor books.

Good luck, Dave M.

[Norminn]

Your link doesn't work, so I have no idea what the house looks like. You have primed, but not painted? That may spell trouble unless you re-prepare it when you paint. Check with a good paint dealer.

As for color, it will never look the way you think it will. As others have said, try samples. A good graphics program, like Paintshop Pro, is fun for fiddling with color schemes. If you have real, natural stone on the house, a muted beige or taupe may set it off; muted blue or green in a deeper shade for accent. A lot can change the appearance of your final choice, such as reflected strong sunlight (as from a sandy beach) or color reflection from landscape. A lot of shade will dim the hue, and strong sun will lighten and diminish it, as well. I'd buy a quart of cheap latex paint and try colors on a sheet of plywood. You can purchase inexpensive acrylic artist colors to mix to the color you want to try. When the sample looks right, take it to a paint dealer (not a box store) to match.

A big tube of burnt umber, along with primaries (blue, red, yellow), black and a nice green will get you lots of interesting neutrals (yes, they all have colors in them).

[G. Morgan]

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 03:38:49 GMT "Jack" used 39 lines of text to write in newsgroup: alt.home.repair

[IMG] Our Rancher2.JPG 07-Dec-2004 10:18 1.3M [IMG] Our Rancher4.JPG 07-Dec-2004 10:17 1.2M [IMG] Our Rancher5.JPG 07-Dec-2004 10:17 1.2M [IMG] Our Rancher_front pa..> 07-Dec-2004 10:18 2.5M [IMG] Our_Rancher.JPG 07-Dec-2004 10:19 1.2M

Yeah right....

Nobody here cares what color you paint your friggin house. If you want to see what different colors would look like, open the images in a graphics program and change that god-awful yellow to something more palatable.

[Jack]

My whole point is to gather other folks' ideas of color scheme. And I thank you for your own upbeat comments. Jack

[Jack]

Sorry folks for the faulty link. Let's try this again:

Jack

[Jeff Cochran]

Go to your local paint store (not Walmart, or even Home Depot) and get sample chips in the color ranges you might like. Staple them to your house and look at them every day for a week. Pick a few and get quarts of those colors. Paint a two foot square section of siding and the neighboring trim, and live with that a week or two. Then buy enough paint to do the house in whatever you like.

Or hire a decorator. A local one. Here in SW Florida earth tones are popular as well. Only our tones tend to be brighter, more on the bright blue, peach and coral side and never in the browns, greens or deep blues popular in your area.

Jeff

[Dee]

"Jack" wrote in news:kYttd.1541$6f6.1177@edtnps89:

I recently had my house painted, so went through all those decisions. I suggest you drive around your area and look at what others' have painted their houses. The point in this is to help you define what YOU like and also what looks good in your area. Factors that are unique to your area - amount of sun and angle of sun, amount of shade, front exposure, style of house, "atmosphere" of area - all affect how colors look to the eye.

For example, painting the trim of a house in a coral red-orange would look louder and be somewhat out of character for a traditional house in New England, where the sun's angle is relatively low and colors tend to be more muted and grayed. But the same coral red is used quite a lot in places such as South Florida, where the sun is hot and direct. The red does not look as loud or hot in FL as it would in New England because the brightness of the direct sunlight washes out the color.

I will also echo the suggestion of buying small quantities of paint and making up sample boards (prime them first). This way you can see all the colors together and move them around so you can view them in the sun and shade on each side of the house.

Dee

[jonesdl]

semi-rural 28

harmonize with

How about a nice beige/khaki color on the siding (blending with the rock wall), keep the trim white and the door either a nice gloss black or something in the red family? The addition to the right [facing the house] could be kept white to tie in with the white trim.

I dunno...

[willshak]

On 12/6/2004 10:38 PM US(ET), Jack took fingers to keys, and typed the following:

If you have a paint program on your computer (PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, etc), open your photos in the program. Using a selection tool, select only the painted walls. In the colors adjustment, select the Hue, Saturation, Lightness filter. Slide the Hue control from end to end, the selected wall will change color as the slider goes through the various hues. Here's just a sample using Paint Shop Pro 9 (pay no attention to the colors I picked, it was just to show how it works)

[Jack]

Your colors don't do anything for me ..contrary to the "pink" that someone suggested a while back..lol. but I understand they were just examples of what can be done. The idea of using a paint program is a good one I think. Never thought it would be useful in this application. I suppose after I settled on a color then it's just a matter of a trip to the paint store to get a wad of paint chips to closely match the paint program colors.. Thanks, Will.... Jack

[Jack]

Good bit of info for my files. Thanks, Jeff. Jack

[Jack]

Some excellent thoughts. I shall mull them over along with others. Thanks, Norm.. Jack BTW, I've reposted the link:

[effi]

(snipped stuff)

go here

on color selector use the mouse operated slide bar at bottom of the new page to move across pallete for more colors

be sure and read at the bottom of the page "Due to variances in computer monitors and printers, the color samples seen here may not exactly match the corresponding paint color. Before you purchase paint, we recommend verifying your selection with a color card at your local Glidden retailer."

best bet is to view actual color cards from a paint supplier

[Jack]

Great. Thanks for the link. I'll play on it a while. But there still isn't anything quite like other opinions. I've also got to satisfy my nice neighbours ..as well as any future resale ;*)

Jack