Your home’s curb appeal plays a big role in determining its value. Curb appeal is the first impression that your home makes when viewed for the first time. It’s made up of several factors including the condition of your home, the landscaping, and the color of the facade.
Roof and Siding Color Combinations
When the time comes to replace or paint your siding or to replace your roof, it’s important to coordinate the colors of your entire facade. While many hues look good together, there are some combinations that can hurt your homes’ curb appeal, while other combinations may increase it dramatically.
Knowing the basics of coordinating your roof and siding colors can help you make sure that your home’s curb appeal, and thereby value, will be a great investment.
Know Your Tones
Tone plays an important part of coordinating colors and helping you determine whether your roof and your siding will work together or not. Generally, most colors can be broken down into either warm or cool categories. Warm colors will have a yellow, orange, red, brown, or gold undertone or hue to them, while cooler colors will have a white, blue, green, or purple undertone.
Generally, if you have a warm-toned roof and warm-toned siding, they’ll likely coordinate with one another, and a cool-toned roof and cool-toned siding will also coordinate well. This is a good, quick rule of thumb that can help you determine if two colors can work together in a pinch.
Subtle vs. Dramatic
Color can be used to create very subtle or very dramatic looks for a home, and changing just one color on the facade can have a profound impact on its appearance. So, it’s often helpful to determine the look that you want ahead of time. Do you want your home to have a subtle, understated exterior, or something more impactful and dramatic?
Generally, the more contrast you add to the exterior, the more dramatic the final look. The less contrast, and the more the different colors have in common, the more subtle and quiet the final look.
An example of this would be to use a very cool-toned, blue roof with a tan, warm-toned siding to get a more dramatic look, and using a green, warm-toned roof with a tan home for a more subtle appearance. Going dramatic does not mean needing to have bold or bright colors, it just means increasing the contrast between the colors so that they vibrate slightly when viewed. This makes the two areas stand out more distinctly from one another.
Consider Your Trim and Accents
It’s not just your siding and your roof that you need to consider when coordinating your exterior colors; you also need to pay attention to your accents and trim to get the desired look. For example, having your trim coordinate with your roofing color can help create a very subtle and cohesive look for the entire home, allowing you to play around more with your siding and accent colors.
The trim can also be used to break up and create a mid-point between your roof and your siding as well. For example, if you have a very bold, colored home, such as a Barn Red, then any roof color is going to contrast it. By opting for a very neutral trim that can act as a break between the siding and the roof, you help quiet down the design and stop the contrast from becoming too stark. The key is to help balance the two areas, so that one doesn’t overwhelm the other.
Trim can also be used to create a more vibrant appearance if your roof and your siding colors are too similar. In that case, using a bold trim keeps your home from appearing too bland. Once again, balance between the trim, the roof, and the siding is what makes the design work.
Play with Your Options
Sometimes it’s difficult to know how two or more colors are going to look together until you see them. That’s why it can be helpful to use tools such as the Color Visualizer from Allura.
This program allows you to try out any of their stylish colors of fiber cement siding and trim with your existing roof. You can see for yourself how a bold trim might make a more subtle exterior pop, or you may wish to opt for a color of siding that has a similar tone to the roof, creating a more quiet exterior design. By being able to visualize the finished look, you can make a better decision about the final color choices for your home.
Coordinate Your Roof and Siding in Style
There are countless ways you can coordinate roofing, siding, and trim into a unique facade for your home. You’re sure to find the perfect roof and siding color combination to highlight your home’s beauty and curb appeal.
