Residential Painting: Choosing Your Color
Residential painting can be done by professionals or by ambitious homeowners who don’t mind getting their hands dirty (and hopefully have the skill and tools necessary to do a good job). Either way, it will be the homeowner’s job to choose the colors.
Even the slightest change in the shade of a color can dramatically alter the appearance of your house,
so it’s important to get it right the first time. There are a million options out there for you to choose from, too, so the decision may not be as cut and dry as you think. Still, there are some simple things you can do to help narrow your selections.
First things first: see if your deed will be restricting your choices. Even if you’re dead set on making your house bright pink, the homeowner’s association may have something to say about it. Many such associations have certain restrictions when it comes to residential painting and what colors you can put on your house.
Before you start flipping through a chip book, make sure you won’t be running into trouble with the neighborhood. Besides written restrictions, certain colors may put you at odds with your neighbors. Some people don’t care about such things and some people do. You’ll have to think about it and see what pertains to your personality and your situation.
It might seem counter-intuitive at first, but you’ll really want to go with more than one color. A completely monotone house is going to look a bit strange, as if a child conceived of the design. Choose at least one accent colors for certain parts of the house and everything will look much better. Of course, doing this means you have to pick colors which are complementary to each other. Bad contrasts don’t work with outfits and they definitely don’t work in residential painting. If you aren’t good with matching colors, see a professional and have them make some recommendations.
Most people enjoy owning their own home because it gives them a certain feeling of independence. Having said that, you probably don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb in your community. This goes beyond irritating the neighbors and goes more into what you want people to think when they drive by your house.
Do you want your house to look like it was built in another place and plopped down in the neighborhood by an airplane? Or do you want it to look like it belongs. If your answer is the latter, take the predominant colors of your neighborhood as a guiding light to help you choose your own.
