What color would you choose?

I'd choose primed, and have it painted whatever color I wanted.

You may not have room for correctly sized shutters -- measure and see, if not, then try no shutters.

The 2nd floor windows look different that the 1st floor ones. On a house like this, symmetry is important.

Agree with PPF. For our new build, our contractor indicated that, by the time pre-painted Hardie was installed, it required so much touch up, that we might as well paint it anyway. We could choose any color we wanted with the primed planks.

Jan,

I do like the look of whitewash, but I don't know much about it. My concern would be how it would last. We live in the midwest and have really cold winters and hotter summers. If I cannot do the whitewash, what color do you think would look best with our brownish red brick? It doesn't have to be any of the colors I specified. Thanks!!

Karen, I love your red brick. Have them put up the preprimed hardie and then pick any color you like. I would look to maybe a soft green/gray but then again I'm partial to greens. I think a blue/gray could work nicely too.

I absolutely would ditch the shutters. Shutters should look like they could cover the windows and yours don't.

I also vote for green, because in my on little world, green is the perfect "neutral." lol

A dark green (if your house does *not* face west) is what I would pick, so that the brick/entry stood out more. Light colors tend to draw the eye away from dark colors, so I'd want to go darker than the brick.

Definitely nix the shutters; they're too small. ;-)

Thanks for all of your comments. I will definitely see about getting a quote for primed only and see what the cost difference would be. I did mention it to two reps who gave me quotes and both of them dismissed the idea. I wondered if it was because they don't do painting as well, so were trying to make as much money as possible.

It sounds like a definite no for the shutters!

I don’t mean to hijack, but if one could select a Hardie color that they liked, why switch to pre primed, which has to be painted regularly forever?

HB, even if you select a Hardie color, you will still have to paint it eventually. The only difference is they paint it in a factory but it's still paint.

Also realize that in the past there have been problems with Hardie prepainted siding.

Wouldn’t the warranty kick in then? No product is perfect. But most have a way out.

Read the warranty carefully because most of them state that if their is a problem and it's not caused by 10,000 different things, they'll replace the product. However they won't pay to remove the bad product or pay to put up new product. Basically most warranties are almost useless.

Primed hardie with the intention of painting defeats the purpose of hardie. It’s a fabulous product and I don’t regret it at all

Yes it's also fine as long as you are happy with their limited choice of colors.

Just curious, if it's preprinted, would you still need to caulk at the joints?

You buy color matched caulk.