I know I want dark trim. We live outside of Portland Oregon, and the mildew makes light trim a nightmare with re-painting annually. Not happening.

I'm thinking Black Fox by Sherwin Williams for trim, then scaling down to griege colors for the body and accent. The beams at the entry will be painted in a color so that from the street they look like wood, just not sure which shade of wood-brown we will use yet. This will also be the color used for the tongue and groove decking in the patio, under the front porch.

Any ideas?

Oh, windows are WHITE. House is on an old pasture (no mature trees for years).

And here is a picture of the lot... It's not totally flat. It has about a 8' elevation gain over 100 ft of depth. The house being tall already with 10' interior ceilings and an 8/12 roof is feeling massive during framing.

Have you started pulling colors to look at yet? I finalized my exterior paint today. Will your designer help with this or are you on your own. Forgive me if I am mistaken about designer.

I swore up and down I wanted a dark gray/ griege. I have about 20 paint samples. I could not get it to work. Last night I said NO. It's not working. So I decided to do a cream/ beige color. I found my color with in an hour!!!

this is what I did. I gathered chips I liked. Took outside the store and put a chips into a two piles. Happy and crappy. I then got more chips. Added to the piles. I then took the happy pile and culled it. I picked my four favorite to have samples made. Went to the house. Painted the samples on cardboard. Picked two I liked from that. Then I painted those two on my exterior. Done! Have my color and LOVE IT!

Anyway. From this experience. I have every single color wheel out there. My opinion on color wheels.

1- sherwin Williams has the best color wheel

2- valspar. I like it because of the way the colors are arranged and they put a huge effort into their historic color process

3- Behr has a great color wheel also.

4. Ben Moore--I know it's all the rage right now. But they seem to have a few really good key colors in the pure grays. (Not a color I care for). I do like some of their actual postal colors. But I am not paining my house shades of lavender. I also hate the way their color wheel is arranged. They other thing I do not like. Their color books are printed by ink. So their colors are different on paint chips.

We are using either SW or Miller Paint.

I've pulled some but I can't imagine them on the actual house.

Designer has us waiting until farther along. She said choose stone first. I am just trying to get a color family idea eight now.

I saw this house I love but unfortunately the owner had no idea what the paint colors are.

Unfortunately I think it's too close to my next door neighbor's house color.

I like black fox sherwin wiliams for trim, maybe. I really like the ultra dark trims.

Why are the rear and side elevations all white?

I have a SW book but can't for the life of me find black fox. It's listed but I don't know how to use the SW fan book whereas I find the BM one very easy to use. Guess it's what you're used to.

It's on the same swatch as requisite gray I think. 7020.

What do you mean all white? There is no architectural detail on the sides because you can't see them. Or lot setback is only 5 ft on the sides and we built a 60 ft width house on a 70ft wide lot.

The rear elevation is pretty basic looking at that angle but it's not a flat wall. I'm going to put a belt band on the center section or of siding.

Sorry, I see what you mean. All elevations without detail are 8" Hardie.

Gwlake

Did you buy 20 samples? Wowza! Expensive. You should sell them. I did 7 for the master in my last house and that was more than I cared to spend.

I really did! I bought them at HD because their samples are cheapest. I kept trying to make the dark gray work for me.

Now that I have good system in place, I do not plan to buy twenty samples again :)

Those pictures you posted look like they have blue/purple tint to them. That is fine, I find myself drawn to colors with green tints. My BFF loves colors with a purple tint. Show me some other colors you like. Your designer is right. You do need to have your stone picked out. Yes, some of your color choices can help guide the stone. But, you need to keep open to what the colors in the actual stone will be.

Why can't you use actual cedar for the columns flanking the front door?

Just a quick look before I need to get my kids up for school.

Have you looked at these? .... they pull different exterior schemes together for you:

http://www.plygem.com/wps/portal/plygem/viewpage?cid=InspiredNature

I really like the idea of the dark trim, a khaki/greige color and those cedar posts to give it a more organic pop. :) I think you could get away with cooler colors if you did a rich wood on the columns. Is there a low maintenance product that LOOKS like cedar to wrap your posts with?

The posts will be made of 6x6 pre-treated lumber. I could do a cedar wrap on them but have chosen a paint grade material. Cedar takes a lot of maintenance we don't want to do or it turns black. We have seen some really nice warm browns that appear from the street to be dark stain. The under-side of the porch has cedar car decking and that will also probably be painted.

I asked the builder the cost to go to cedar posts and it was very expensive. I will ask if I can do wrap in stain-grade instead but I think my worry about maintenance really will push us to paint instead.

I wouldn't want the matinence either, but I'd absolutely come over and admire it! ;)

I've seen what happens to cedar siding even after a single season. No thank you.

My neighbor is doing massive cedar beams. 12x18 some of them. Their porch beams were 12,000 alone.