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Painting Your House Cyndi-Lauper-Style
As Cyndi Lauper once said, "On my darkest days, I wear my brightest colors." What a great piece of advice, especially for a city that can be as gray as Seattle. Living in the Northwest brings enough dark days. Why not think about brightening up your house and helping improve your mood along the way?
July 1, 2011
Painting your house is something that tends to get people very nervous. It is a big cost and something that only tends to happen every ten years or so (or more frequently depending on what part of the country you live). There's a big fear of getting it wrong and ending up with a color scheme they don't like. My advice?
Screw it. Have fun.
Because paint is something that literally has to be replaced periodically, it is one of the easiest places in your house that you can be bold and a little fun with as you'll always have the chance to replace it. Obviously, you want to temper the color with your own interests; not everyone loves big bold colors, but that doesn't mean that you can't still push yourself.
As Cyndi Lauper once said, "On my darkest days, I wear my brightest colors." What a great piece of advice especially for a city that can be as gray as Seattle. Living in the Northwest brings enough dark days. Why not think about brightening up your house and helping improve your mood along the way?
Using some bold examples from my neighborhood, here are the things to consider when thinking about painting your house:
How many colors do you want or need?
There are plenty of options but at the very least you'll need one color for trim, one color for the body, and another color for painted decks or porch floors. There's often a temptation to paint the floors of your decks the same color of your house but try and move away from that.
Two colors can work great with a nice crisp white trim and a contrasting body color that suits your style:
Aside from the porch color, three or four colors on the house can really help liven up your exterior and keep it interesting. Victorian homes are famous for this, but there's no reason why you can't do this on homes with even less detail. Think of your trim as one color, your body as a second, and your windows and doors as a third. If you have some detail trim on the doors and windows you can add a fourth color.
Three colors is easy when one of your colors is a natural wood like fir. Here is a great bright example of color on a home with some contrasting fir doors:
This house in my neighborhood is a great example of lots of color. While the bold colors are not for everyone, I've grown to love this color scheme; it brings a little bit of an East Coast beach town right next door. And it is hard to forget and says a lot about the vibrant personality of the person who lives there!
The other thing to think about is WHAT color you want. Color says a lot about the style of your house. Think Red New England barn or weathered gray shingles in a beach town. Carefully think about what kind of personality you have and how it all fits in with the color of your home. (Now remember, if you're selling your house anytime soon, you'll want to go way more neutral). This great old home is now used as a Thai restaurant and the color scheme suits it well.
More colors obviously add a lot more cost and that could be a big concern for you. But with anything, I recommend that you find the ways to creatively get as much bang for your buck as you can. Maybe you're looking to order new windows. Look at getting them in a factory applied color that suits your paint scheme for basically a "free" third color. Just remember that the color of your house says a lot about you and your house. While we may not all be as bold as Cyndi Lauper, we can certainly afford to hire her spirit to paint our house every now and then!
