Your Biggest Canvas, Your House. Need Help?

                  I wanted to update a post from a while back about house colors.  This time of year, many people start thinking about painting the outside of their home.  The big question is what colors to pick.  A few years ago, I wanted to paint our house because the original paint was fading.  Not wanting to go to our local home owners design committee for a change approval, we opted for the original color.  OMG, how boring, what was I thinking.  Anyway mistakes can be great teachers.  Now upon review, if you need to see some good uses of color, check out the Sandhurst neighborhood off of Murdell and Cancannon.  Many use a base, a trim and an accent color to set off the home.  So you can do a drive by and check them out OR you can go on line and play with colors. 

Here’s a site that really has a lot of resources about how to paint your home.  This link goes to a variety of paint programs that let you pick a style of house and then pick colors for it.  The second one on the list, Resene EzePaint from New Zealand was the toughest to use of the ones I tried, but had the most house styles to choose from and a seemingly endless pallette of colors.  Bob Villa’s and Better Homes’ programs were easier to use, but much more limited.  All these were the free versions, if you find one you like, you can buy your favorite that let’s you upload a  photo of your house.  Then you can see what it might really look like.  But the site has many more articles about how to choose colors, it is an information rich site.  Here’s another site with color suggestions and tools. 

So my suggestions is review the advice about colors in general, like looking at the color of your roof and using that as a starting place to pick your pallette, then play with the free programs to see which one you like.  Next buy or use a program that allows you to load photos of your home into it and play with colors.  Finally, if you have followed me this far on what could be a $3,000 to $6,000 investment, find a color consultant for $50 to $150 to review your choices so they can make recomendations, suggestions and corrections.  Exterior house colors are one of those First Impression things, you only get to make one. 

One final thought is to check Consumer Reports on their rankings of brands of paints.  A couple of years ago they ranked Behr paints available at Home Depot, as their number one paint and a best buy.  Many paint contractors like Kelly Moore partly because of discount they get from the store.  Try to get costs from both Home Depot and Kelly Moore, or your favorite choice of paint when you are getting bids from painters.  AND please get at least three bids and find out if they pass along their discount from the paint store.