Choosing Exterior Paint Colours
Starting an exterior painting or staining project?
The typical exterior painting project aims to freshen up or can be attributed to a regular maintenance cycle for exterior surfaces. In the early planning stages for an exterior painting or staining project, it's important to step back from the structure that is being re-finishes and consider the environmental surroundings and more permanent architectural features that may not be changing, such as roofing and drainage systems. The doors, siding, trim and other architectural features may be painted, but other surfaces may not. So, once you have an idea of what is and what is not going to be painted, then you have a good starting point for colour selection.
Consider the details
As you consider the areas to be painted, think also about the areas or surfaces that you would like to emphasize or de-emphasize. Perhaps the front door has great architectural details that you would like emphasized, so use a bolder colour to draw attention to the door. If there are surfaces that you would like to de-emphasize, such as downspouts or eaves-troughs, consider painting them the same colour as the siding or the most dominant colour in the combination. That way, the eye would be drawn to them more architecturally interesting features of the exterior, such as doors or windows.
Selecting colours
Now that you know which surfaces are not going to be painted, determine a single colour that will be included in a colour combination. That colour could be an off-white that represents the downspouts and eaves-troughs that may not be painted. From that single colour, identity the various colour combinations inside this collection that most resemble your starting colour. From there, we have provided some possible colour combinations that will ensure colour harmony.
A typical colour combination has three colours: one colour for the more dominant or large surface area, such as siding, one colour for trim or architectural details, and a third for accents, such as doors and shutters.
A note about digital colour representation on screen:
The actual paint and wood stain colours may vary from the images displayed on this web site. We strongly recommend the actual paint colour samples be picked up from the Store and viewed under the lighting conditions where they will be applied to ensure complete colour satisfaction.