How To Pick Exterior House Colors – An Ultimate Guide

Renovating a house isn’t an easy task. However, compared to selecting the perfect hues for your home’s exteriors, it’s like a walk in the park. Have you ever found yourself confused between multiple shades of colors? You get in a fix constantly thinking about how to pick exterior house colors that will go great with the neighborhood as well as the interior of the house?

It’s a long process that drives us up the wall. So, to make this process easier for you, we have come up with the ultimate guide that will help you pick paint colors for your house’s exterior.

How To Pick Exterior House Colors

The exterior of your house is the first thing someone notices. It’s important to paint it in a way that complements your house and the entire neighborhood too. Likewise, it’s also an expression of your individuality and personality. Your home’s exterior can tell a person what they can expect when they step through the door.

Transforming your house through new exterior paint colors is an excellent way to increase your property’s appeal and draw people in or scare them away – if that’s what you want.

The question remains, though, how to pick exterior house colors that will make your house stand out? Let’s take a look at the guide, shall we?

Choosing The Perfect Hues

There are millions of colors and tons of combinations to choose from. Yet, one can’t just go to a store, pick up a color, and start painting. There are multiple aspects to think about and many decisions to make.

Check The Bylaws

The first step in selecting paint colors for your house’s exterior is to check the bylaws of the neighborhood. Often, we reside in areas with strict homeowners associations. Some laws might be a hindrance in selecting the color you badly want. This is to maintain the overall consistency of the neighborhood and to ensure that the particular architecture and style aren’t compromised.

We all know a badly painted house causes the market value of the entire street to decrease. Not to mention, the horror of looking at it every day.

Before starting the process, check the bylaws and create a list of colors and shades you can’t use. The process of elimination is also the best tool when faced with a variety of choices.

Architecture, Style, and Era

Repainting a house can transform its appearance and appeal. However, many times repainting causes more damage to the style and architecture of the house. You can’t paint a vintage-styled house with funky colors. Similarly, boring dull colors on a newly built house will only cause its value to depreciate.

The goal here shouldn’t be to worry about how to pick the exterior house color. Instead, ponder over color schemes that go well with the style and architecture of your house. Don’t forget to find out the era it was built in. Some colors are more fitting for particular eras, while others are a huge contrast.

Look At the Constants

It’s easier to come up with a bunch of house exterior paint ideas if you really analyze every inch in detail. Carefully examine the aspects that will remain constant. The stonework on your house, the large circular driveway, or the door with the massive and unique knocker all come together to create the best ideas for paint colors.

The exterior paint color you choose must enhance the beauty of the elements that won’t change around the house. You can even draw inspiration from these elements. Hues of the same colors from the brickwork, the woodwork, or the colors of the planters and shingles will make the exterior stand out.

Remember DAT

One important thing to note when searching about how to pick exterior house colors is to know all you can about the dominant, accent, and trim colors.

The dominant color is the main color that you will be choosing for the exterior. On the contrary, the accent color is the complementing color for the door, windows, and other such elements. The trim color is the one that really ties everything together and creates a huge visual impact. It’s a contrasting color for the letterbox, railings, roof eaves, doorways, and windowsills.

Choosing a combination of colors that make for a great DAT team is the key to ensuring that the resulting exterior looks sharp and enticing.

Get Inspired

If you are still confused about different colors, the best route to take is a drive around the neighborhood. Observe various houses and get inspired by their exterior. Pick out a color from one driveway and choose another one from your neighbor’s roof. Taking a look at real ideas helps you better envision the colors you want to choose and how they will look.

A drive around the neighborhood will help you clear your head after staring all day at paint chips. It will also help you get inspired and choose a color that goes well with the neighborhood, and all its surroundings.

You can also take inspiration from the landscapes around your house. If your house is surrounded by trees and woods, you can go for softer tones. If you live in an area near the desert, you can go for neutral tones. And if you live in the suburbs with a small backyard, you can choose a combination of lighter tones and dark shades.

Add a Pinch of You

We know you have gone through multiple magazines, websites, and mood boards on your quest to learn how to pick exterior house colors. You have collected various color schemes, and your room is filled with paint chips scattered around. Are you ready to finalize the color?

Wait, what’s the hurry? You might have come across tons of suggestions for the exterior paint color. However, did you stop to think about what you want? You see, the exterior of the house is an empty canvas for you to fill out with beautiful colors. But you can’t just use colors that you think people would like.

You have to consider color palettes that represent you and your individuality too. After all, it’s your space, and the color ideas should come from within you too. Make sure the color you are choosing is on par with your style and what you want to convey to the entire neighborhood.

If you are an old cat lady who doesn’t want people to disturb you, it would be helpful to choose darker shades instead of brighter, inviting ones. If you are an extrovert and love to socialize, we’d recommend that you go with bright, fun colors.

Paint Swatches

Now that you have selected a color palette and different color schemes for your house, the next step is to conduct paint swatches. We recommend painting wide areas that are exposed to both the sunlight and the shade. It will help you determine what the color looks like in different conditions.

Moreover, make sure you paint on light surfaces, so the hues of the color aren’t changed. Once you are done, keep the swatches for a day or two. Observe them at different times and under different conditions.

The Final Step

The paint swatches will help you choose the final color schemes for your house’s exterior. This concludes the guide on how to pick exterior house colors. Now, you have to choose the right professionals to actually do the work.

If you are looking for someone who will ensure to replicate your ideas perfectly, you can contact Fish Painting. We have people who specialize in painting home exteriors to give your house a fresh, new look. Stop pondering over it, we aim to please you with our home exterior paint services.