Your house is a gorgeous, classical, balanced, symetrical style, & I'd think it will look best with colors that are in keeping with that image...even if you have to think a while to figure out what to use! The brick & wrought iron & the very size of it give it weight, so you need colors with "weight" so that they look well-matched with the rest of the house, & since the brick has depth & texture, you want simplicity. Paint the downspouts as close to the brick color as possible to camouflage them. I like the way the house looks now, as far as matching & contrast, so I'd experiment with maybe charcoal gray or British racing green (deepest green in the universe, with a little black mixed in) for the shutters, & spanking white for columns & window trim. I like the red door, but if you want a change, maybe stain the door a walnut color & use the same color on the area above the porch. That combination might give the house a "lodge" kind of atmosphere... or you could go spanking white on everything but the door & use a deep Chinese laquer red on it. Whatever you do, it's a beautiful house, & you'll have a lot of fun working on it!

@Zone4 yeah, I think I'm starting to realize that the brick probably helps break up the facade and keep it interesting. I'm starting to be really intrigued with the limewashing idea. If it turns out we could paint the windows, would you do black or white? I like the idea of a black/charcoal, but have also heard that is the worst color on vinyl windows. @aprilneverends it has been hard to really get the colors across from the listing pics. Basically it is 50 shades of unappealing (to me at least) tan inside and out. So I want a dramatic change, but I know people are really torn about changing brick, so I'll probably have my husband mockup a version with the brick and a dark greige paint to see how that looks alongside a limewashed version. Front door, yes, that thing has a big stain glass Texas star that doesn't help anything. I was thinking one of the modern doors with 3-5 satin horizontal lites to keep some light coming in from the door, then finding a complimentary garage door. For the French doors, I definitely won't change my mind on the divided lites - however they are just an overlay on top of a solid piece of glass, so one of the contractors said you could just pop them off. One set of doors needs a new handle, the other needs about $300 in repair work and weatherproofing, so that is why I'm debating whether or not to rehab these versus put in new ones. And if we replace, I don't know if sliding glass doors that let in tons of light or new French doors with the thinnest frame possible would look best. I know landscaping will have a huge impact too, and could really turn this into a more modern looking house. The bones are certainly good, and it is plain enough that we can subtly take it in a couple directions, just trying to narrow down what will look best while also being somewhat our style.

I like the colour scheme you have. Perhaps the grey siding could be a tad darker. I would look into cleaning the white spalling on the brick, redoing the landscaping, and add a roof or shelter over your front door. It's a pretty house that just needs a bit of tweaking. Also, when the time comes to replace the shingles, go for black or very dark charcoal.

We are thinking about having the beams and post painted to look like wood. it will all be wrapped in hardy which we chose for the easy maintenace. My husband has been researching techniques how to get the wood look. We’ll go ahead n paint all the trim white similar to what we already have with white gutters and keep the white trim on the windows. He’s also researching stsining the brick instead of painting. Do you think a gray color would look good? SW light french gray or go darker? Thank you!