Good manners are important when considering a new look for the exterior of your home. Sharon Grech, Benjamin Moore’s Colour & Design Manager for Central Canada suggests you start your planning with a stroll around the neighbourhood.

Check out the neighbourhood

“Inside a home, it’s important to consider the relationship between rooms, ensuring there is harmony” she says. “When working outside it’s important to examine the relationship between the house and its neighbours. In a recent redesign of a renovated home our Benjamin Moore Design Team found that only a small change made a big difference to the way our house fitted into the streetscape.” There were a number of other recently renovated homes nearby, and most exterior treatments used shades of beige and taupe. The Team wanted their house to stand out from the crowd, but without looking out of place. As is often the case when planning an exterior, the colour options were limited by what was already there.

Project Make-over

“The first photograph shows the house before we set to work,” says Sharon. “The black and white of the upper storey may have been faithful to the ancient European mansions built in this style, but on a Canadian city street it looked uninspired, to say the least. The second photograph shows the house exterior as we left it, and the third is yet another variation on the theme, produced using the Benjamin

Moore Personal Colour Viewer. Between them they demonstrate how even subtle changes in colour can transform the view from the curb.”

In the Design Team’s makeover, the half-timbering is in Caramel Apple CC-450, while the stucco is Sandy Brown CC-150. The front door, the key element on the front of a house, is solid black, in a high gloss finish, and is flanked by a pair of bold light fixtures. In the computer-generated variation, the stucco remains the same but the half-timbering is lighter - Taiga CC-696, and the front door is now a rich warm red brown, Laurentian Red CC-152.

Note that in each version the bold “punch” colour is confined to the front door, while the garage door shares the same colour as the half-timbering. Too often, homeowners make the mistake of also using the front door colour on the garage door, which, because of its size, becomes the dominating feature of the house - not what was intended.

“The differences are subtle, but that’s how it can be with exterior colours,” says Sharon. “The first of our treatments is laid back, unassertive, very much in tune with other houses in the street. The second approach gives a cooler, more modern look, but still in harmony with its neighbours.”

The Personal Colour Viewer is a computer program for use in the home, developed by Benjamin Moore to help homeowners try out colour palettes on their screen before making a final commitment. The PCV is available on-line, www.benjaminmoore.ca or from Benjamin Moore retailers.

For further information and inspiration about colour visit www.benjaminmoore.ca

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 5:30 am and is filed under Exterior Doors, Interior Design, Home Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.