On the Outside...

xterior paint is something I haven't really discussed much on the blog before. Maybe because I'm much more likely to change the paint color on the interior of my house than the exterior. Although, when I moved into this house I changed the trim from a red/brown to Green and then to Black and the front door has gone through a similar transformation, from White to Green to Black to Red. The back of the house was Cream and is now Charcoal, and the garage door and posts in the front were plain White and I changed them to Cream...so really, I guess I change the paint color more often that I think.

In this post I want to talk about sort of interesting ideas for exterior paint colors and then in a few days I'll show you some local examples of houses I like with exterior paint colors that are slightly out of the ordinary. I'm not going to talk much about beige, because 1. most houses in AZ are already beige and therefore, bore me to death and 2. if you're seriously considering beige, I don't think you're reading this anyway.

(example of typical beige AZ house)







Some of these ideas are a little out there - but it's fun to see cool and interesting color and combinations when they work well.




I don't think many people are going to try this. Honestly, even though it looks okay here, even interesting, possibly cool, let's be honest, blue is probably the hardest house color to pull off (with the possible exception of purple...but more on that later). I do think it can work, but the shade of blue needs to really be just perfect. Here are some examples of houses done in blue which I think really do work, some of them border on a blue gray, which can be nice.






































































































Can any body really make a purple house look good? Well, I'll let you be the judge, these are best looking purple houses I could find:




























































My advice when considering purple? If you don't own a Victorian in Eureka California, I wouldn't attempt it.










A house color you almost NEVER see?





































Orange is pretty rare. But I really like both of these.

I also think red exteriors are underutilized, you see them with red brick, but there are some red and reddish brown colors as options for exterior paint that are very pleasing to the eye:

























































Interestingly, if you look at brochures from the 1950s, a lot of people painted their houses in yellows and greens, but over the years, those often got painted over in favor of white or beige. Here are couple of examples of ranch style homes of the 50s:





















Here are some yellow houses I think turned out cool:


































































































Some of these are a mustard bordering on beige but I like that tone.


There are actually a lot of greens which can work, here are a few that are somewhat unique:




















































Okay everyone can always make a white or a cream work, they are a common, but less boring than beige I think.





























































Not interested in white? How about a charcoal or a black. I am really loving this color on exteriors right now, hence my own choice of charcoal for the back of my house:





























































(my house exterior in the back...charcoal w/ red trim)















Gray exteriors are really nice. I highly recommend gray for people who don't want to commit to color.




















































Lastly, if you really want to go earthy and feel like picking a brown, consider something more chocolate or a little different (a friend mixed gray with brown for a great gray that leans brown on her exterior, pictures to follow in the next blog on exterior paint) than the lighter brown/beige you usually see.