Where do you live? Take a ride or walk around your neighborhood. Are there other homes like yours? How have they decorated the exterior? What details do you notice? Colors and accents for a southwest look: blue, red, gold/yellow, green, orange - curved walls, exposed wood. Spanish: beige, deep yellow, red, blue, white - black/wrought iron accents. Mediterranean - white, blue - shutters, wrought iron accents. I would paint the home the same brown color as the trim. To me, brown always means this style home. Even though you have to have vertical siding, can you pick any sort that you want? If yes, that may be where you can make the siding so it doesn't look so obviously vertical. I Goggled vertical siding and some are a lot less vertical looking than others.

There is no review board for changes? Stucco 100% is a better material. In my Historic District you are allowed to replace in kind by right and if you want to change a material you just have to fill out a couple forms and pay a small fee..

Thank you, everyone, for the advice. To answer the question several of you asked: it's actually the city's Design Review Board that is refusing to let me return to stucco. Their argument is that because it has been siding since the 1960s it must remain so. I am now trying to track down the 1926 building permit which should show the whole thing was stucco, as evidence, but no luck yet. I have also shown them the one pre-1960s reno photo I have (with my mom in the driveway looking very groovy: I'll post below) but, still, no dice. Right now the only way to go back to stucco would be to propose a full facade reno with architectural drafts. Just going through that process of review, in my city, is $3000, not including the cost of hiring an architect.

Here are few more photos of houses on my street that didn't get the 1960s treatment (and no dis to my grandad for what he did back then: he probably thought it was all terribly modern, lol). I have also shown these to the Design Review Board but they were unmoved.

Without knowing setback rules for your area, could you build a short/tall stucco wall and create a courtyard area to help the vertical siding recede? There is a mini version of the idea in the first photo of your neighbors house.

Some option

Ugh sorry your review board has made it so difficult. Ours gets a bad rap (because it is a step) but they are reasonable at least and not that much money. You would think the photo of your house with stucco would be sufficient...

If you have a lot of pics of your house as it was, I'd take a series of pictures from the same angles, pair them and then use lots of verbiage like "restore the original" and "remove inauthentic and poorly done remodeling" in your application/discussion. Lay it on thick. If you have any tiny spots of damage, take a pic of that and blow it up.

Of course, if an influential member of the board lives in your neighborhood or hates the style, you might be stuck, at least until that person leaves the board.

You don't have to claim to want to restore every detail, or you can claim that's in the plan, but not the current budget, so now you're just doing the siding.

An update: my contractor and I were once again shot down by the city's Design Review Board. Stucco is forbidden. So siding it is. Thank you for all the great suggestions on how to (aesthetically) live with that facade. Cheers!