Many factors go into making up your home’s curb appeal – that first impression that your home makes to viewers standing at the curb. The type of siding, architectural features, landscaping, and the color of your home all have a big impact on how your home is perceived. While some architectural styles have built-in color palettes to choose from, other homes are more flexible, working well with any number of colors.
Home Exterior Color Combination Ideas
Ultimately, the best color combinations for your home exterior will depend on several different factors, including your location, architectural style, and personal preference.
Working with Your Home
Before you start picking out colors for your siding, roof, shutters, and front door, take the time to look at your home and its architectural style and features. Many homes work best when you work with them and what features are already in place.
For example, if your home has a lot of decorative trim, a mixture of panels and siding, or you have a natural “break” between different areas of your home, you may want to make these features stand out by using a variety of colors. This is common on Victorians, as well as some Tudors and Colonials, and other older homes. For example, this home makes great use of muted greens and burgundies to show off the different features, pulling everything together with a cream-colored trim.
Hint of Color
The area that you live in can also have a major impact on what color combinations will work best on your home. Houses on the East Coast and in the Mid-West, for example are often found using neutral colors like white, cream, taupe, and gray. If this is true of the area you live in, but you want to introduce some color, consider doing so on the accents of your home. The shutters, front door, trim, or roof can all make great places to introduce small amounts of color to an otherwise neutral façade. This Taupe-colored home uses a brick red shutter to help give it depth.
In this case, the cooler undertones of the taupe pair well with the warmer red shutters, creating a contrast that increases the appeal of the façade. The roof mimics the color of the siding so that only the red shutters and white trim compete with the siding.
For homes that have a warmer neutral color, such as this home done in Desert Sand, consider accenting with a color that can bridge the gap between warm and cool, such as green. Homes located across the country work well with natural colors, including green and tan, making this is a universally popular color combination.
If you really want to make a bold statement, while keeping your home’s siding fairly neutral and versatile, you also can’t go wrong with the classic combination of black, white, and red. This Snow white home uses a bold red front door, which really pops out against the cool white tones of the siding. This in turn pulls the eye right to this area, focusing it, and making sure that you don’t miss anything about the front porch. The cool-colored roof helps ensure that the red stays the darkest color on the home, so nothing competes.
Crisp White Trim
If you live in an area that emphasizes dark colors on homes, such as the South and some parts of the West Coast, consider mixing a deeply saturated color for your siding with a very crisp, white trim. Using a bright white against a deep color makes the lines of your home stand out, creating a slightly more dramatic look and keeping the overall color of the home from getting too dark. This home shows off a very deep blue siding, trimmed out with clean white everywhere for a simple, yet stylish appearance that would fit in well in several areas.
Classic Black and White
If you live anywhere in the North part of the country, consider the vary classic color combination of black and white. Snow white siding paired with black shutters and a black or gray roof is universally popular, and particularly appealing in the northern states and in New England. Use this color combination on classic styles of architecture – cottages, bungalows, four-squares, Capes, and Colonials to get the best results.
Color Your Home
The color combinations for home exteriors are nearly endless. Whether you want to go bold or neutral, make sure that you think about what you’ll be accenting and showing off when you apply color to it. Newer siding materials such as fiber cement and proprietary color application processes mean that you may never need to paint your home again, so take the time to think out your ideal color combinations to find the best possible results for your home and enjoy increased curb appeal for many years to come.
