Oh you know what, the colour fades. Besides, you do have some red tones in your house brick, and I think it looks perfectly adequate. Once you get some edging on, sweep the sand into the cracks, and distract the eye with whatever will grow adjacent to the walk - even grass will help - the slight disconnect will be hardly noticeable. It would be to the point where I could live with it, at least. And really, I don't think changing the colour will address the real problem here, which is twofold. One, you have a gorgeous house competing with a gorgeous walk for attention. By rights, the walkway should play second fiddle, but you've chosen a walkway that is a diva in and of itself. Me, I like that look though. Two, I think it was a design mistake to use a similar size brick to what it in the house but in a non-complementary pattern - putting geometric and swirly together. This means that any colour option will look like a mismatch with the house unless you use the same brick in the same pattern as the house. Solid grey wouldn't work either. The pattern alone creates a visual disharmony, even if exactly the house brick were used. Having said that, I might have made the same choices; I like visual overstimulation (I did the same thing with my carpet and curtains in my living room; neither plays second fiddle to the other and some people would say they clash). The walk itself is gorgeous, and again, the disharmony will be subdued once you get the sand into the cracks (will reduce the starkness of the brick outlines and the swirly pattern) and get the garden context filled in. Me, I'd leave it. But if you decide to change it, I'd change the whole walkway concept, not just the colour of the brick. Random or square-cut flagstone would be my choice here, or just solid concrete. Not small bricks. KarinL

Hi, I am at work so I can't view the photos now, but will later. We used the Cambridge pavers in onyx/natural (which looks grey). I believe it was the Renaisance Collection, but will check. They have the more "old stone" look to them, which we wanted. We did a random pattern and it gets alot of compliments. The only problem is we have them also in the driveway and a few times, we had to clean oil stains up left from a leaky car. We are presently re-doing our backyard. It was overrun with large trees overgrown bushes that were half dead from the past owners overcrowding. We are using bluestone back there because my husband wanted something different, yet I wanted to carry the greyish tone there also. We also had our contractor build a wall with brick on the top and a brick flower box all around the periphery of the yard using Danish color brick. I still have to pick a color for the stucco part of the wall and hoping it all looks good.

Thank you Verdance! I was a little concerned about the rock filled bathtub thing myself. I'm actually not sure how bad the drainage situation is over there, though. That corner is always damp, but we have never had standing water there or anything like that. Until a few months ago, the pile of rocks was actually mounded up against the fence, covering a pile of dirt and "mulching" a hydrangea that was shoved in the corner, so even if water wanted to drain out onto the neighbor's patio, it couldn't. The pros we have spoken with have touched on drainage ideas, mostly involving an underground drain connecting to the pipe in the trough you see in the third photo, which connects to a catch basin near the front of the house (downhill at least 1.5 feet over a 30 ish foot run). We would like to attach the downspout to that pipe as well, and bury the whole thing so that it's not an eyesore or tripping hazard. Anyway, I hear what you are saying about concrete, but to be honest I don't love the look of it. If money were no object I would be happy to put pavers over both the existing concrete and the dirt area, but the 10-12K that will cost is earmarked for other things this summer. It might be possible in the future, though, which is why I don't want to do anything that would make it more difficult to do pavers in the future. Grrr. Decision making is not my strong suit ;)

For me, I think it would be Tuscon, but it is not a fair test with the house being in shade and the pavers in different lighting. Once you pare down the selection to two or three, you need to bring actual samples home (more than a single paver) and review the choices on site, from a distance.