3 Keys to Selecting Color for Curb Appeal

The first installment in the series on each of our 7 Ideas for better curb appeal focuses on color selection. It's widely known that color can have one of the most dramatic effects on your home’s curb appeal. And who doesn’t love looking at paint swatches to pick colors out? There are so many! In fact, the sheer number of options might even be a bit daunting. Thankfully, you can narrow your selections a bit by taking cues from your neighborhood and home itself. Exterior colors are important! Don’t forget these 3 key considerations before you go out and surround yourself with rainbow-colored swatch cards.

3 Things to Consider When Picking Exterior Colors

1. Don’t Copy the Environment – But Do Consider It

Look at the colors around your home. Consider the colors of the landscape: the horizon, flowers, and trees. Also, take a good look at the colors of your neighbors’ homes. You’ll want your palette to complement these colors, rather than outright match them. Maximize your curb appeal by working with the color environment and standing out by using carefully chosen accent colors. Home exterior colors need to be in harmony with their surroundings.

Look at the unpainted materials of your home: the roof, stone work, retaining walls, brick. These tend to be neutral, but often have a tint or flecks of other colors within them. Note these colors and use them to inform your color selection moving forward. You don’t want to paint the whole front of your house only to later realize it clashes with your roof’s undertones. Get your exterior color palette right the first time!

3. Vary the Colors Decisively

Perhaps you’ve noticed, home exteriors are often neutral in color. Many like to keep with a monochromatic scheme and simply go for varying shades of gray, beige or brown throughout the facade and trim. It’s an easy way to keep the look cohesive. The one trip-up? Using colors that are too close together. Make sure they are varied enough to be distinguished from one another. There really is a good bit of nuance to selecting colors for your home exterior!

If you want to use more than one color, consider keeping the bolder color(s) as accents to be painted on the door, mailbox, trim, or shutters. It’s best to keep one color dominant, so all the colors are not competing. And if you use more daring color(s) on a smaller surface area, they’ll be easier to change if you decide to update your home. It’s less of a hassle to repaint a lime green door and shutters than it is to repaint whole swaths of siding (and it’s quite possible that the lime green looked better in small doses, anyway.)