Taking a walk through the Portland, OR, city neighborhoods I found this example of color choice confusion. ©CristinaAcosa

Have you ever found the perfect house paint color only to put it on the wall and discover that it isn’t so perfect after all? Then, you try again, and again . . . until maybe you just stop trying.  Choosing exterior paint colors can be especially scary. Your process and progress is there for all the world to see. Not only do you have to decide what you think about each color choice, well-meaning neighbors may feel compelled to offer their opinions and suggestions. It can be  nightmare.

So how does a person pick exterior paint colors? There are a variety of color solutions to this question ranging from the custom to  off-the-rack choices. As a color consultant, when I work with a client to choose colors, the process is completely custom. Together we build a color palette that works with their personality, architecture, environmental setting and possibly the local neighborhood association.

If you don’t have access to a color consultant or color coach of some type don’t despair. Most paint lines market groupings of exterior paint colors specifically to homeowners. If you are completely without an idea of what you want, studying color sample groupings is a good place to start the color choosing process.  You can find these samples colors at any paint store or building materials store. The paint store employees can usually send you home with samples.

If you aren’t shy, check out a paint color fan deck from a paint store and start cruising neighborhoods looking for color schemes that appeal to you. When you find colors you like, stay in your car and find an approximate match. In my quest for a perfect color I have been caught red-handed with a color fan deck against a garage wall by surprised homeowners. I wouldn’t recommend that method. I’ve surprised more than one sleeping dog!

Here are a few exterior paint color choice tips:

• Pick three to four colors for your house: The Body color (main color). The trim color (around doors and windows). A fascia color (the fascia is the board that edges the roof).  And a door color.
• Paint the garage doors the body color of the house (unless they are natural wood) so that they don’t stand out and compete with your front door as a focal point.
• Use good quality paint that has built in  UV protection.
• If you paint your house yourself, ask the paint store employees for a few application tips, you’ll almost always learn something useful.

Enjoy!

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Traveling to Germany and not knowing German, I wondered how easy it would be to read the signs and get around. I laughed when I saw this sign my first day in Heidenheim, Germany. The language of color spoken internationally! Photo credit: ©Cristina Acosta

Color communicates. Any color expert, designer or artist will agree with that statement. But ask those creative types what exactly a color is communicating and the answers you get may have surprisingly little in common.

Here’s why: Color is a language that continually evolves with the cultures that contribute the shades and tones of meaning each of us sees. And, each individual brings their personal biases and perceptions to the mix, further complicating things.

Yes, you can open most any home decor magazine and read at least one color experts’ opinion based on a study about the calming effects of green – or beige – or . . . whatever the next color may be. But the truth is, the focus group that decides green is calming one year, may decide that mauve is calming next year. And, one more thing to keep in mind,  the experience of an individual and the particular mix of individuals in a focus group is always changing.

Consequently, the meaning of a color is a moving target. One person’s irritating red is another person’s energizing red. It’s all about time and place, people and perception.

So what do you do with this information when you’re standing in the paint store looking for an idea or some advice? Here’s a few tips:

• The first thing to do is to choose a group of colors you love that you think might work for the project. For example – If you’re choosing exterior home colors and are looking for 3 colors, pick at least a dozen that you think will work.

• Then (ideally, take some time with this step) clip the color samples into individual pieces and spread them on the table. Start choosing your favorites.

• When you’ve narrowed it down to at least 4 choices, THEN start choosing where the colors go. Such as this color for the body, this for the trim, this for the gable trim, etc.

Remember that when you are choosing colors, you are bringing a lifetime of experience to the process. Respect that first with a little exploration, then listen to the advice you get from friends and professionals. You’ll have a better feel for the color choices that are right for you.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore and Pittsburgh Paints are the top 3 National paint brands. There are also excellant specialty and regional paint brands available. Buy the best quality paint you can afford for the best results. High quality paint has more solids, consistent pigmenting and better wearability.

Here’s why. There are at least 3 parts to how a latex house paint color looks: Base tint, pigment and sheen. House paint isn’t just white paint with colors added. Depending upon the color, the paint store selling the brand uses a particular (there can be several choices) tinted base color to which  they then add measured amounts of their color pigments. Each company has their own group of pigments. And some companies such as Benjamin Moore, Pantone or Divine Paints use very particular pigments.

What this means to the homeowner trying to match a paint color from one brand to another (usually cheaper) brand of paint is that there will be differences between brands.  Sometimes you can’t tell the difference, and you’ll be happy with the result. Other times, differences may include subtle things like sheen changes, and sometimes (especially when using Divine Paints) the difference between the actual brand and the cheaper copy results in radical shifts in how the color actually looks on the wall. Depending upon the skill of the paint store professional who matches the color, the differences between the color specified and how that color looks on the wall can range quite a bit.

So what should you do if you want certain colors but want to save money? The first thing I suggest to clients is that they buy a cheaper product from the line of colors they like. That way, color consistency will be the same across the product line with some exceptions. Benjamin Moore for example, won’t sell their Affinity colors in their lower priced product lines because they can’t deliver the exact match and paint qualities.

If purchasing the color sample paint brand isn’t going to work because of availability issues or some sort of arrangement with a painting contractor, then ask to see large samples (dried) of the colors so that you can be sure the color match is acceptable between brands.

Recently a painting contractor asked me about matching Pantone Colors from the Pantone Matching System (PMS). He said that the professional paint stores he worked with were hesitant to match the colors. When this happens, it’s likely because the paint store personnel does not have a clear sense of the base tint that will yield the best result.

The bottom line is that if you’re not willing to buy the brand of paint consistent with your color sample, you take a risk that you won’t get exactly what you want. Buy the best quality paint you can afford from a professional paint store, and  it’s often not a problem. If you’re trying to save money on house paint it’s important to  make an informed decision that works for both your sense of aesthetics and your wallet.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Painting the garage door and garage door trim the same color as the body of the home subdues the attention the garage door gets (despite it's size) and encourages the eye to travel to the interesting trim color around the windows and entry door.

Put a red tomato on a white sand beach and your eye will instantly focus on the tomato. The color difference (even if you know nothing about tomatoes) will be enough to capture your attention. Not only does this visual attribute help you find a snack or your socks, it’s an important concept to keep in mind when you’re painting your house.

When color consulting with clients who are choosing  exterior paint colors I often suggest they don’t call attention to their garage. This advice doesn’t work for every house or every client, but it’s worth considering. Here’s why:  Many American homes have garages that visually dominate the entrance side of the home. I presume this architectural phenomenon  reflects the reality of most Americans’ relationship to the car.

If you have a home like this, your garage is near your front entrance and the garage door or doors will (all together) visually dominate your entry way. Not only is this iffy Feng Shui, it puts your front door entry way into second place. True, most people will figure out where your front door is and  won’t be knocking on your garage door to get in your house. Even so, downplaying the garage doors in this situation will amp up your home’s curb appeal.

So, how are you going to magically shift attention away from the garage doors and towards the entry door? The answer is a relatively easy and inexpensive  home redo. Here it is: Paint your garage door trim and/or the garage doors the same color as the body of the house. Before you whip out the brush (or google painting contractors), I do have a few guidelines to help you make an informed design decision.

• Paint the trim around the garage door the same color as the body color (exterior wall color), regardless of the trim color around the windows and other doors.

• If the garage doors are ordinary, paint them the same color as the body color.

• If you have beautiful natural wood garage doors that enhance your home don’t paint them without careful consideration. They may be a valid design element, especially if the natural wood is repeated in other areas of the home such as the soffits, trim, shingle accent areas, etc. If you are in doubt, paint the entire home exterior first, then after looking at the result make your decision to paint the garage door.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

This vintage craftsman home has a red body color, deep green trim and natural wood door and other accents. The natural wood acts as a "orange" against the red. It's a very appealing and classic original color scheme for this era of home.

Exterior paint colors can change the way you perceive architecture, and it’s the least expensive “remodel” you can do! Artists know that color “moves” visually in space. Colors recede or advance depending upon where they are in relationship to each other and their surroundings.

If you are a homeowner choosing exterior paint colors to create color schemes or a color plan for your home, here are a few color tips:

• Check to see if your neighborhood has any restrictions regarding exterior color use. Often titled Covenants and Restrictions these rules will limit the choices you have. If your neighborhood is in a designated historical area, check with the local Historical Society or Building Dept., to learn if certain house paint colors are restricted to historical colors typical to the era your house was built.

• Choose at least 3 and possibly 4 colors for the home so things don’t get too dull. Please don’t think that painting the whole house one color will make it “blend in”. The result is usually very “lumpish”. In a typical home the colour scheme can applied like this:
• • Body Color (main part of house)
  • Trim Color (around windows and Doors)
  • Fascia Color (trim around the roof and possibly the belly band (6″ – 12″ wide plank trim that separates 2 stories, or the body of the house from the peak of the roof).
  • If the home has gables (usually in a different type of siding), seriously consider an additional color for the gable area.
  • Door Color
• Buy the best exterior house paint you can afford and make sure it has a UV blocker in it.

• Remember that natural wood (with a protective finish) is a “color”. If you are fortunate to have natural wood, consider the color of that wood as one of your paint colors. If you’re having trouble with this idea. “Match” a paint color swatch to the wood until you have color most like your wood. Though you have no intention of buying this color as a can of paint, add it to your collection of color combinations so that you’ll be sure that your real paint colors enhance the color of the natural wood.

• Whether you are painting it yourself or having it done, make sure that the prep work is well done. A good foundation of prep work will make your final paint colors last years longer.

• If you have a strong prevailing wind/sun direction, put an extra coat of paint on those sides of the house. The entire paint job will last years longer.

Contact me to schedule a color consult for your project.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Best Ever You magazine has invited me to be their Paint and Color Expert. The editor, Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino along with her team has put together an anomaly in the current publishing business climate; a successful and growing magazine. Kudos to the staff at Best Ever You!

Readers are encouraged to send in their color and paint questions. Though  I’m not able to answer questions individually, I will  include design and color solutions in my monthly column whenever possible.

I look forwards to working with Best Ever You. Check out the on-line magazine, you’ll be sure to find something that inspires, informs or entertains.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

White is not a common color in nature unless you're looking at snow. Nature mostly gives us accents of white as surf, clouds or rock.

Painting your ceiling white is not necessary or even always a good idea. White paint will not always make your room look larger, cleaner and more fashionable. Sometimes white will seem to expand the size of a room, but sometimes it’s a big mistake. Mostly, people paint their ceilings white because they don’t know what else to do.

I’m not exactly sure when white ceilings became fashionable, though I suspect the country’s fascination with white paint began in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair. The famed White City at the World’s Fair included a complex of buildings and streets over an area of hundreds of acres. Buildings were finished with white stucco and brightly lit with the new-fangled street lights. Acres of radiant whiteness must have been an entrancing alternative to the dark countryside and dimly lit city streets filled with dark tenement buildings.

Then, about thirty-five years later, the Great Depression hit the country and nobody was painting. Whitewash, a type of paint coating made with calsomine (from slaked lime) was a very cheap alternative to colored paints. It could take days to dry and usually rubbed off easily before it flaked off after a long winter. Often used as an exterior paint coat, whitewash was a stop-gap paint until a durable (and more expensive) paint could be purchased.

After World War Two and the resulting Baby Boom, suburbs of homes sprung up on the outskirts of cities all over the country, especially in the West. Cheap and fast construction of ranch style homes (often referred to as tract homes) dominated the scene. White paint was an inexpensive choice for the developer or builder, requiring no color mixing or color changing during the assembly-line like painting process necessary to get an entire tract of homes painted inexpensively.

The 1970′s famous white plaster splatter ceiling (sometimes mixed with glitter) was ubiquitous in many Western tract homes of the era. I’m guessing that a significant population of Americans alive today grew up looking up at white ceilings.

Times have changed. Current paint and coatings technology has resulted in paint with amazing qualities our grandparents wouldn’t have dreamed possible. Some paints dry in a hour or so, can be easily scrubbed, are available in different sheens and they have little to no odor. And, there are literally thousands of colors to choose from.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when considering a ceiling paint color:

• Use white or a light color on your ceiling when you have a lot of poisonous insects that you need to see. (No joke — in a tropical environment this could be an issue).
• When the ceiling is a different color than the walls, the area where the  ceiling and walls meet (line of demarcation) becomes a focal point. Unless your ceiling is interesting either architecturally or because it’s accented with beautiful moldings or beams, consider painting it the same color or a different color that is in a similar color value as the wall paint color.
• If the ceiling is low, paint the walls and ceiling the same color (a mid-value or lighter) so that there is no color change line (line of demarcation).
• Use a paint sheen on the ceiling that has some reflective qualities so that it bounces light. An eggshell sheen is a favorite.
• The only reason to use a flat or matte finish on the ceiling is to hide surface imperfections or to reduce reflected light.
• If the ceiling is particularly beautiful or interesting and it works with the design of the room to emphasize the ceiling, vary the colors, color values and sheens on the ceiling to complement the wall colors.
• Your local paint store professional can give you additional guidance after you’ve choosen your initial colors and explain your design ideas.

www.CristinaAcosta.com

Contemporary home with ho-hum exterior colors

Contemporary Architecture New Color Plan with Addition of Gray & Blue over the Yellow

Are you ready for a home makeover but you don’t want to break the bank? Have you ever painted your house and when it was done, wondered why the paint job didn’t look as good as you thought it would? Changing paint colors doesn’t have to be a complete re-do. With a few strategic changes of color you can get the look and pizzaz you want by changing only the colors or areas that make the most difference, rather than repaint the entire exterior of your home.

The clients who built this contemporary residence engaged the architecture firm, Rainbow Valley in Oregon. The house, edged on one side with a grove of Oregon Oaks is a beautiful interplay of warmth and light that rests lightly on this hilltop in a Western Oregon Valley. The homeowners chose colors for the home under the duress of the final push before the home was completed. Though they liked the colors, they felt that something was not quite right. After they’d moved in and had a chance to live with their new home, they hired me to help them create a new color plan.

I asked my clients what they liked and didn’t like about the colors and listened to their answers as I looked at the intersecting shapes of the contemporary architecture.  Together we put together a color palette or plan that accentuated the lyrical aspects of the architecture while bringing more of the landscape colors into the mix.

Walking around the home I noticed how well the house integrated with the lot and the surrounding nature. Despite the often overcast skies in the area, subtle color was present everywhere. The beautiful gray trunks of the grove of Oregon Oaks, the many shades of green ranging from brilliant emerald to gray green changed under the movements of the cloud cover. Occasionally the clouds parted to reveal small patches of blue sky.

Keeping the existing green body color and the taupe trim color, we added a gray and a light blue to the exterior color story. Those two colors eliminated the existing yellow paint. With the yellow gone, the green appeared more vibrant. Adding the light blue color to the small front structure was the final touch that gave the front of the home a light-hearted lift.

Choosing colors for a home or business is more than just a few samples of  colors that “look good.” The best color plan is one that enhances the building, the surroundings and the lives of the people that live and work there.

___________________________________

www.CristinaAcosta.com

For color consulting, contact me for both remote and in-person consults.

If you are a homeowner choosing exterior paint colors, here are a few choosing-color tips:

• Check to see if your neighborhood has any restrictions regarding exterior paint color use. Often titled Covenants and Restrictions these rules will limit the choices you have. If your neighborhood is a designated historical area check with the local Historical Society or Building Dept. to learn if paint colors are restricted to historical colors typical to the era your house was built.
• Choose at least three paint colors for the home so things don’t get too dull. Please don’t think that painting the whole house one color will make it “blend in”. The result is usually very “lumpish”. In a typical home the exterior paint colors can applied like this:
• • Body Color (main part of house)
  • Trim Color (around windows and Doors)
  • Fascia Color (trim around the roof and possibly the belly band (6″ – 12″ wide plank trim that separates 2 stories, or the body of the house from the peak of the roof).
  • Door Color
• The example of the commercial building above demonstrates the third paint color as the natural warm toned wood stain. Notice how the wood trim around the upper windows (in the green area) is red, but in the red area, there is no additional color. I simplified the trim treatment in this part of the building to reinforce the visual integrity of the larger shapes. My point is that you don’t have to do the same thing in every part of your paint job — mix it up if the result is stronger.
• Buy the best house paint you can afford and make sure it has a UV blocker in it.
• Whether you are painting your house yourself or having it done, make sure that the paint prep work is well done. A good foundation of prep work will make your final paint colors last years longer.
• If you have a strong prevailing wind/sun direction, put a extra coat of house paint on those sides of the house. The entire exterior paint job will last years longer.

Contact me to schedule a color consult for your project.

All writing and images on this blog are copyright protected by Cristina Acosta

www.CristinaAcosta.com ]]> http://www.cristinaacosta.com/blog/2009/07/hello-world/feed/ 0 http://www.cristinaacosta.com/blog/2009/07/colors-together-create-a-melody-line/ http://www.cristinaacosta.com/blog/2009/07/colors-together-create-a-melody-line/#comments Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:49:07 +0000 Cristina Acosta http://www.cristinaacosta.com/blog/?p=17 Have you ever found yourself looking at two or more house paint colors or other home decor colored items and been completely confused as to which paint color is the best choice?