Deciding any color scheme for the exterior wall of your house is a big deal. . In many cases, a bad choice of colors isn’t the end of the world-you can always repaint a bedroom, for example.
Rather than make a hasty decision that you’ll later regret, let’s talk about choosing a house color to go with your roof.
Tips before you choose House color
Contrast Matters
Have you ever seen a house where its exterior and roof are similar-perhaps even the same-color? We’re willing to bet the answer is no for the vast majority of you, and it’s for good reason.
It looks… odd. We typically have a stark contrast between our roof color and the exterior color of our house because it just looks right.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you need to pick a color that’s as far away from the color of your roof as possible, but it will look better if there is a good amount of contrast. This typically rules out something like dark and light shades of the same color, but not necessarily.
Avoid Unpleasant Clashing
One pitfall to avoid when trying to find the right amount of contrast is in picking colors that clash too much.
Fortunately, you don’t need to paint your whole house to find out if you’ve got it right, since colors will clash on any scale.
In other words, you can hold a couple of swatches next to each other, try a digital enhancement of an image of your house, or even draw a picture and color it in! If it looks terrible on paper, it will almost certainly look terrible on your home.
Tone it Up
Another thing to consider is the tone of the colors you are choosing. Tone is a full spectrum, but there are generally considered to be two main tones; warm and cool.
Warm tones will typically have a red, orange, or brownish hue to them, whereas cool tones tend to feature more blue, green, and white. For the most part, tone is an entirely subjective thing, and you can just go with what you like the most.
Temperature Matters
It’s not typically something an average homeowner would think about when painting their house, but the temperature of the region in which the house was built is a factor that shouldn’t be ignored.
This is because different colors have different reflective properties. Essentially, lighter colors reflect more light (and heat), while darker colors absorb it.
Of course, for a temperate climate, this isn’t a particularly important factor. But for more extreme climates, where the temperatures are either especially hot or especially cold, you may want to consider a color that helps your house maintain the kind of environment you want inside. For example, a white house in a hot climate to reflect the heat and keep the house cooler.
Do You Want to Make a Statement?
It’s always worth thinking ahead when making a decision like what color to paint your house. Now, we’re not saying you shouldn’t make the decision that you want to make, but if your decision is a day-glo orange exterior under a bright red roof, it’s going to stand out.
If you’re not the kind of person who likes that sort of attention, you might want to consider more subtle colors.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, if you are happy with the way your house looks, and there are no complaints from any local neighborhood associations, there is no reason you can’t paint the exterior house color whatever you want. That being said, there is a reason most houses end up following the same rough blueprint that we’ve outlined above.
