anyone have any ideas or advice?

Thank you! I know it makes sense to wait...but the beige shutters are depressing me, ha

lol - I understand. Build out a Houzz "exterior" ideabook while you wait - lots of great photos of homes like yours and a great creative outlet while you wait.

I honestly like the pink I think it'd adorable, but if you're going to whitewash it it's tricky to say what color the shutters and door should be because a whitewash is still going to leave a lot of color so you may end up with a very pale pink house. Could you tell me what color your trim is and is it staying the same color?

Thanks for your input! The trim is currently the same beige color as the shutters and everything else. We would like to change it eventually, but the window partitions on inside the glass, so we would have to keep the trim a lighter color.

I also forgot to add that one of the shutters is rotted and falling off the front of house, and we have replacements waiting in garage. I don’t want to paint the replacements beige and then repaint everything next year, so I was hoping to take a chance on a color that would work now and later!

If it were me, I would leave the brick, do the trim in a cream color with yellow in it not beige, the shutters in a neutral grey but darker than the roof no blue undertones and then the door if you don't want a bright color than either the same grey as the shutters or a soft black so it blends in with the windows from afar. If you're going to whitewash it and the bricks would be white then your color options are endless, if you like the serpant color it would go nicely but I wouldn't paint the garage door that color, you're only going to attract attention to them, I would try to keep it as close to the painted brick as possible. Whatever trim color you decide on (I think a grey lighter than the roof would look nice) I would use the same color as the trim around the door hallway area but paint the door a different color so it doesn't look like a giant blob of color on the front of your house. You could do the front door the pink of the brick as a homage to your old brick and I think pink blue and grey look good together.

Well, the good thing is you can test a couple of the old shutters out without being stuck with it or trying to sand it off if you don't like it

This was a home they did on HGTV, pink door, serpent blue, grey concrete, the colors go nicely but having a pink door I'm sure isn't for everyone lol and actually I take it back, whatever color you do the shutters do the trim around the door. I think if your house is going to be white, best to keep the trim by the roof closely matching so it's not too distracting, with white houses having bright trim, bright shutters, bright door looks like a bunch of lines everywhere.

Thanks Christina, such a good point about making the garage doors blend in with the house. The pink brick has been growing on me, and I’m wondering if I will like it with the right color shutters and trim. Thanks for your thoughts!

No problem, everyone wants the kind of house that's not common in their area. I would definitely grab some color cards at your local home improvement store, I usually grab about 6 of each color and tape them together so I can get a decent idea of what it will look like especially outside, you gotta be happy with the color in the morning, in direct sunlight and at sunset.

I've come across some of the free services online that you can "paint" your shutters, but it is hard to get the full effect. Are there any other services that would help with this? I know of Brick and Batten, but we aren't looking to spend $1000k for a virtual makeover right now.

This is how I found the Sea Serpent color that I was asking about, from this certapro site

The certapro site is free? My exterior needs a lot of work, I should use that app to test out some ideas. I like the Serpent color, it actually makes your house look more reddish tone too, more classic I guess and older than the 1960s, something you'd see in the north east.

It is free! Kind of a pain to use and obviously not exact, but at least it’s a start. That’s what we are going for, more of a classic and older look :)

Awesome. Yeah I would definitely do the Serpent and a light almost silver grey for the trim.

Did you do the front door like a washed out aqua?

Yes just messing around with colors on the site :). I think I am leaning towards something light like that though and different than the shutters and trim, what do you think?

The one on the door in picture is SW Copen Blue

I like it, I would stick to something in the aqua or seafoam green family. This is so much like what I'm trying to do my house but my brick is sooo much harder to work with. I wanna do a navy trim and an aqua front door. I can't help but gravitate towards color on the exterior, I haaate beiges and tans and browns and that funky brownish orange color that's popular on trim and siding too.

I didn't think you could find harder to work with brick than 60's pink :). The navy and aqua sound pretty!

oh it's possible 😂

This hodgepodge of colors is brought to you by 1972

I don't know if you're up for a teensy bit of landscaping and depending on what region you live in you could plant a crape myrtle in the front so from straight on it kinda covers your garage doors so you won't need to stress about the color as much. This is my attempt of drawing one on my phone. They're easy to care for and come in a ton of sizes and colors.

:) ok you might win, they really knew how to mix up some groovy brick back then! but it might look great with the right colors like you were talking about!

I think I'm gonna paint over the brown brick with a greige or dark cream, I could only get straight grey on my phone so it looks way too cool toned but covering the brown makes it look more orange and makes the white not pop as much so ot should be easier to work with.

those are pretty trees! yes we plan to work on landscaping in another phase...there are some trees behind where the picture was taken from. we are in suburbs of chicago, it looks like that specific tree would be a stretch to make it through the winters.

oh wow, what a difference even just with that phone pic sample! good idea

Yeah I think that's a little too far north. I'm sure there's a small flowering tree you could work with. Our yards are baren. I'm kind of glad though, gives us a clean slate. Our last house had a ton of trees that rotted and a "garden" that hadn't been maintained so it was overwhelming. We're in Houston too so finding something that can take high temps but also a ton of rain is a challenge, crape myrtles and palm trees are all over the place.

I know right! I asked for suggestions and so many people said to just paint the whole thing but a) it's expensive and b) i don't want the paint to come off someday and look terrible. This was a cheap solution I came up with to tone things down and shouldn't be a ton of work although it's a 2,000sqft home all 4 sides brick, at least it's single story. Also my worry with painting the whole thing light is a lot of houses here get algae or dirt splashed up from the rain all along the bottom and I don't think I could pressure wash it if it's painted.

I've been reading a lot about Romabio paints and lime wash, the lime wash is pretty durable once dried!

A couple people mentioned Romabio paint. I'll take the cheap route for now. This isn't my dream hoise, if it was some 1800s victorian I'd invest more on the outside but it's a 1972 ranch lol they're so boring and common here.

OK, one more question - I can't decide if we should paint the garage doors the same as shutters (Sea Serpent SW) or the same as the trim (Greek Villa SW) - like a bright creamy white as in the virtual picture above. I thought the lighter color at first to blend in with trim, but maybe dark would detract less from the front door? Ideally I would love new wood garage doors with some windows but that won't be for a while

I like SW Sea Serpent. Black shutters would work as well.

thank you! do you do mockup images for people, and can I ask about costs?

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/172473860716815420/ I want to add a portico like this to the front, instead of the existing door surround. I have so many ideas and its hard to picture them all together!

KellyC I came in here today to see if anyone had suggestions to your exact dilemma what to do with the brick. Mine is a strange color as well, and painting it was suggested to me as well. I like just needing to pressure clean it now and then better then painting and it needing to be painted again and again. I like the idea of a stain, have you gotten any feed back on a stain, something that would saturate into the brick and stain it darker. Mine too has the random dry brush paint swishes, year 1970. When they used well water to water the lawn it stained the brick a rusty color and I didn't hate that. That I could work with some earthy tones. Also considered the "smear" or however they spell it but I have way too much of it and it might look like a mess when finished.

Hi, ran across your post and wondered of you checked out an online exterior design service yet to help you visualize your options? We used MirkStudios (www.mirkstudios.com) and they had an easy Color Swap package that allowed us to test several colors - using high quality photos of our home - and pick the right one before committing. The process was really quick and easy, and proved incredibly valuable at a very modest cost. Good luck, your home is beautiful!

Thanks, I only used the free certapro site, and just decided to go for it. Here is what it looks like now, we used Sea Serpent for the shutters and garage doors, and Breezy for the front door. We weren’t going to paint the trim yet, but it accidentally got painted - so we repainted it with Classic Light Buff. I like it much better, still deciding about lime washing next year.

Love the door color!

It looks so cute!