Exterior paint help on Craftsman mountain house with Cedar shakes
We are having a tough go at finding the right combo. The natural shakes complicate things slightly because it forces you to balance 3 colors instead of 2. We are going for a grey-blue main paint theme, and either a dark or a light grey trim. The Cedar shakes will remain natural. The first picture is a house we drove by that made us want to do this color combo in the first place, but we quickly realized it was a lot more complicated.
We have tried blues from Behr as well as Sherwin Williams. They all seem great on the swatches, but on the house it almost looks so blue that it seems comical. Then, we thought a dark grey trim would be a no-brainer, but trying to match one with the blues has proven terribly difficult. It is board and batten siding. The lower level concrete foundation will ultimately be painted the color of the trim that we pick. Any advice from the group would be fantastic.
A house that made us want to do this in the first place:
And our multiple swings and misses. Something is just.... Off.
Comments (15)
PROAaron Holland Painting, LLC.
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoRelated Discussions
Exterior paint help on Craftsman mountain house with Cedar shakes
Comments (22)Chris your inspiration house has a large proportion of the natural cedar color to the blue and a lot of what we can see on that house in the photo is in shadow which makes a big difference. You're trying to choose a color for your house without a clean background - the yellow is a player in making colors look different. I took a picture of 2 colors from one of my paint decks for you - put them on a table on our porch that is similar in color to your cedar but when I compare the picture to the paint deck it's horribly off so I hesitate to post it for you. I may email it but just know that it's not representational at all. I'm looking at Benjamin Moore Everard Blue CW-575 and Wetherburn's Blue CW-580. these are from their Williamsburg collection, grayed blues with green in them. Even on the B/M website the colors are off on my computer. I'm not certain these are the *right* colors for your house but it's a slightly different direction that brings your setting into the mix and a place to start. Hale Navy is part of the Historical Color collection from B/M - that collection is a good place to be as well. The colors are dirtier which is good - what you don't want is a bright, clear color on your house. There are different ways to approach trim and house colors - they can be high contrast with crisp definition or lower contrast and more subtle transition. Neither one is better, they are just different looks but your trim will still be differentiated from the house body with less contrast. Are you planning to paint your eves and rake boards like the inspiration house?...See MorePaint and roof colors? 1977 mountain house
Comments (10)Hi - what a beautiful home! Have a look at the colorographies at The Land of Color .com to compare key attributes of many popular white colours. Mascarpone is a very light, quite colourful off-white. As an exterior colour in bright light, it may appear lighter still again. Perhaps surprisingly you may find you can afford to go slightly darker than you imagine for the exterior, to mitigate that. Bright sunshine can also bleach out the appearance of colour, so Mascarpone’s quite high Chroma (colourfulness), may help to maintain an appearance of colour in those conditions. How much colour you can enjoy before it appears positively yellow to you, is a combination of the effect of light upon it and your own personal aesthetic pleasure. Viewing a sample outside in situ will help. Here’s another colour similar in Chroma, but slightly darker. It maybe helpful to view both. You still may prefer the lighter one, but try and think what bright sun & snow reflection will do to it too. Not an ideal way to do it, but measuring the colour from a photograph of the lovely roof colour it appears to belong to Blue-Green Hue Family. Helpful to know when building up your exterior palette....See MoreExterior color for craftsman house near the beach.
Comments (12)I would stain the wood beam and corbels a dark brown. Here are some Benjamin Moore colors I think would be nice. I found that the darker colors seemed to look better than some of the lighter ones I originally picked. With any one of these, there is an opportunity to add more color in the soffit and gable ends. I sampled Storm Cloud Gray on the garage....See MoreWould love exterior paint & garage door advice for mountain ranch home
Comments (8)Hi, great call outs, thank you! Yes, we will be re-doing the driveway, combo of new concrete around the garage entry and connecting over to walkway leading to front door, the driveway itself will be gravel, which will look more country and fit the surrounding better, there is a ton of driveway that winds around back of the house, that much asphalt will create quite a stark look. The paint is starting to chip in some spots so we need to paint anyway, had originally planned to do board and batten or something along those lines for ourselves, but now will just repaint. If we go white, would you keep all trim, garage doors, etc, white? Would the green door look okay with that, maybe I just paint the door as well while I'm at it? Also, totally agree the door doesn't go with the house, it was on my list to replace! Garage doors will be replaced (they're ancient and have never worked since we've moved in), I'm thinking of barn door style carriage to echo shop doors. Currently we have a weed lawn, and not much of one at that. Our lot is a freeway for wildlife that tromps through all day/night long, in particular the deer and turkey wreak havoc on plants as well as mulch (the turkey love to dig!). But some hardy landscaping, particularly close to the house/walkway in contained small areas (due to drought, as apple_pie_order so correctly pointed out) are in the plans as we get closer to listing....See MoreChristopher Evensen
6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago- PRO
Aaron Holland Painting, LLC.
6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago Christopher Evensen
6 years agoChristopher Evensen
6 years agogracie01 zone5 SW of Chicago
6 years agogracie01 zone5 SW of Chicago
6 years agoChristopher Evensen
6 years agogracie01 zone5 SW of Chicago
6 years agoChristopher Evensen
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoSo we did some more test painting and decided on the muted gray/blue for the main sections, similar to what gracie linked. We tried 2 different trim colors and are feeling like the dark gray blends in too much with the blue. The lighter gray seems to have more contrast. What does everyone think? Also, what would you recommend to paint the lower concrete section of the house. The lighter gray trim color if we pick that? Or would you possibly paint it a darker gray like the trim we weren't digging?
Gray/Blue with light gray trim:
Gray/Blue with dark gray trim (on right side of garage):
Closer pic of Gray/Blue with darker trim:
lighter trim in the shade:
Close-up of lighter gray trim:
(Middle of pic): Lighter gray trim again.
Lower concrete section that will need to be painted:
Christopher Evensen
6 years agogracie01 zone5 SW of Chicago
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoChristopher Evensen
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoThat is a nice subtle color. This is the Behr NYPD color that we were liking above:
It does look much different in the pictures where we used it, but it might be the camera/monitor etc.
gracie01 zone5 SW of Chicago