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Design Dilemma Paint Exterior

Ranch style house makeover New Trim Color and Main Color?

last year

last modified: last year

Hello Everyone! The BROWN has to go!I would love some suggestions on a NEW trim color and main color for our Ranch style home. I would like to give my home a nice makeover. The trim now is a creme color. I know that the go to is to go with the brick which is like a peach and yellow color and i am NOT A FAN of my brick color but do not want to paint the brick. Could you please Help a girl out!! I am struggling. Thanks in advance guys!

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Comments (4)

jck910
last year
Nice looking house. Paint the trim the medium gray of the mortar. Then remove the overgrown bushes and work on the landscaping.
kazzh
last year
Following the suggestion to siurce your color from the existing pallet, try looking the colors in tbe brick for inspiration. I think i can see sand, slight greens, alongs side the grey mortar. If you have some scrap lengths wood around, get some tester pots, paint the wood and place on the horizontal or vertical so you can see how colors work in situ. A lumber yard might have cheap off cuts you could purchase cheaply to experiment on.
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I just love how they used the pieces to their best advantage, so it looks both respectfully restored but also functional and modern. The house looks so livable to me. I hate orange and yellow for me, but love how they work in that space! It just doesn't look overstyled or "Matchy matchy." Very inspiring. I am looking at MCM homes now to buy for my new house since i had to move, and I am very interested in this idea of how to keep what is best about them, rather than try to make them into something they are not. I am going from a Depression era row house to probably a MCM small rancher. Also inheriting my mom's MCM furniture, along with grandma's depression era stuff. And a SO who likes traditional, ornate stuff. Mom's stuff has a very Victorian but also Asian feel, since she lived in Japan for a year, and brought so much stuff back! Also had a SF bay view apt. before she married dad. I would love to do a room in homage to that! SO hates MCM, likes something akin to the old Ethan Allen "traditional" look. I am thrift store chic, lol! So this home really speaks to me the way it artfully blends different styles and elements! Also looks so uncluttered, and yet not so pristine that it doesn't look like it could be lived in functionally. I also like how the old pieces are allowed to be what was great about them, like those yellow-green side chairs in the living room. Twenty years back I would have gone "ugh" and never even wanted to SEE those chairs, they would have looked cold to me and I would have preferred an overstuffed Victorian look. Now they elicit a wave of nostalgia and a homey feeling! Grandma had a couch just like those chairs!
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I like the pergola idea by your entry, but, I do like the brown that you have, and also like your brick. It looks like you dont have a place up near the house, for real landscaping, but, it appears you do have pots, that I assume you are planting colorful flowers in when the weather permits? It does need some color to brighten it up, although, like most of us, there is that thing about the leaves all falling off the trees, called winter. Maybe in the spring, you could do some nice landscaping on the yard side of the driveway, that would help with the need for better landscaping.
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I think white is the best base for a color scheme if you don’t have any furniture yet. You can always change it later. All whites have an undertone so it might depend on the furniture you pick. I love all your windows and right now you don’t have any color in the house so the white seems stark. It gives you a great neutral palette to start. Chalk painting your hutch would be fun and easy. It would update it. Pinterest is great for ideas. My daughter painted her oak cabinet Annie Sloan Paris gray and it looks like Restoration Hardware now. Then waxed it with white wax. Get some graph paper and figure out a floor plan. Decide where you want a sofa and chairs. I think you can keep whatever you have for now as a dining table. Go slow and step by step. It all seems overwhelming when you first move in. Your house is beautiful so enjoy the process.
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Susie--thank you. I like the Felted Wool combo with Urbane Bronze and was thinking something like that. cat_ky, I know what you mean. Maybe I should just be staying with white and be done with it. But so many people seem to want the bronze windows. The bronze windows also go better with the interior renovations than white does, but both are fine. I am likely selling the house after I renovate it and want it to appeal to a wider audience. I'm posting the original photo of how it currently looks here for comparison.
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apple_pie_order
last year
last modified: last year
Please clarify: Which items do you want to paint? The window trim is brown, the windows and door are black, and the gutters are white. The stucco walls are beige.
kandrewspa
last year
Your roof is brown and it's very visible from the front, so you're going to have difficulty getting away from it 100%. That brick isn't bad, we've seen a lot worse on this forum. Lighten up the dark brown elements on the facade to something similar to BM Smokey Taupe 983 or Stone Hearth 984. Then cut the tint by 50% for the area between the windows. I can't promise you Smokey Taupe will be the right color because it's difficult to get exact color matches looking at colors on computers. But Smokey Taupe has an LRV of 55, which means it's substantially lighter than the brown. It also is somewhat gray, so it would give you a different look.

The biggest bang for your buck would be a substantial investment in landscaping. What you have is simultaneously sparse and overgrown. It's probably been a while since any effort has been expended here. I get it - DH and I don't know much about plants. Engage a landscape designer for a plan and DIY part of it if you're interested and able.

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