Color your World; Tips for finding a painter and updating your home’s exterior finishes!
September has arrived, and the first bits of fall color in our New England landscape aren’t far behind. I love this color palette and it’s a big influence on my own home’s exterior color choices. Join me in updating my home’s exterior colors. Thanks to Chris Grenier, of Grenier Painting and Finishing (and Mike and Katy) for their great work and attention to detail. Photos by KDZ Designs, unless otherwise noted.
Time to refresh our house’s exterior!
In late spring, I realized that I needed to book a painter to update the solid stain on our modest, single story, 1960s ranch house’s exterior. Small repairs were needed to some of our original 1964 board and batten siding, as well as the usual door, trim and body re-staining.
2013 colors
2013 colors
Which colors did I pick?
The last time we stained the house was in 2013; see my blog post here on what I chose for colors then. I made a significant change then, but this time around, I wanted to make small changes.
- Body Color: Lighter and grayer, but still a deep green: Ben Moore’s Raintree Green;1496.
- Trim Color: I wanted it to be closer in color to our new gutters, so I chose Ben Moore’s Misty Air; OC-44, creamy, with a green undertone.
- Doors and the brick chimney (that’s visible in the breezeway) remained Ben Moore’s Georgian Brick; HC-50.
Paint Sample Boards
What goes into choosing exterior colors? Take some cues from your surroundings and the history of your home.
- Is your home in a wooded area, near a pond or a lake, or in a neighborhood surrounded by other homes?
- What are the colors of your surroundings? If you are near other homes, you may want to find colors that are different for your home, but still complement your neighbors’ color selections.
- And you can evaluate how the colors that surround you change from early morning to evening and also seasonally.
- Be aware that your color selections can look different depending on the light conditions!
- Is your home from a particular period (Arts and Crafts, Mid-Century, etc.) – what colors were popular when your home was built?
- Take a look at my blog post on color theory, recently updated!
In the woods…
We are on a very wooded lot; we have a lot of green in spring and summer, with gold, red and orange predominating in the autumn. And we have Japanese maples of different colors throughout the spring, summer and fall. For example, the orange door and chimney color connects both to our surroundings and was a popular color in the 1960s.
Color selection…don’t forget to use real paint samples!
- You can start thinking about color options using paint color decks, or going on-line to your favorite paint manufacturer.
- Look at ranges of color; most paint companies have everything from color collections based on historic periods of home construction, to chatbots, to color consultations based on photos that you provide.
- Finalize your selections: paint sample boards! As I do for interior colors, I picked up sample containers of paint from my local Ben Moore dealer, Cowls Building Supply and painted my choices on foam core boards that I could move from place to place, to see how the colors looked in different areas, as well as at different times of day, under different light conditions, before settling on my final choices.
What if you still aren’t sure about the colors?
Do you need more help? Interior designers, like me, consult on paint projects and may include exterior colors, as well as interior colors; my curriculum in design school included color theory. There are also architectural color consultants, whose focus is color, color applications and their complexities, and they can be found locally and on-line.
Photo by Amy Crosby Photography
Finding a painter.
- If you have a painter whom you trust, that’s great!
- If you need to find a painter, contact your local chamber of commerce, look at on-line reviews, talk with people who have had their house painted recently, talk with local building contractors for their recommendations.
- Talk with several candidates and let them know that you will be reaching out to more than one painter.
- Always get an estimate of the work.
- Discuss details (including timing, the prep and painting process, deposit and progress payments, etc.)
- Ask about their providing a contract.
- Typically, a building permit is not required for exterior painting.
Chris Grenier – www.grenierpainting.com
Does your home’s exterior need repairs?
- If you need carpentry work done as well, and your painter has someone in mind, make sure the carpenter is a registered or licensed professional; the specifics vary depending on where you are located.
- For minor repairs, in Massachusetts where we live, the carpenter should be registered with the Commonwealth as a Home Improvement Contractor.
- For more significant structural work, a Construction Supervisor License is (CSL) is needed.
- Depending on the extent of the carpentry work, you may need to contact your local town or city building department to see if a permit is necessary; talk to your painter about permit needs, as well.
- If you need a significant amount of exterior repair, prior to painting, I would suggest contacting a licensed building contractor first and then ask about their recommendations for painters.
Starting the prep work – cleaning the siding.
- Prep work usually includes power-washing the exterior and removing any dirt and debris from all surfaces to be painted or stained.
- All surfaces need to dry properly before applying the paint/stain.
- Repair work that had been identified is completed.
- Any areas that needed to be scraped and primed would also be done at this point.
Spraying the surface, brushing the trim, etc.
- With prep work complete, the crew would cover the area surrounding the house and completely cover the windows, doors, gutters and more.
- The painter and his crew spray the solid stain on the house.
- Once the stain dries completely, the trim, windows and doors are painted.
- A final look at all of the surfaces should be done after the work is complete, to make sure any tape was removed, along with any trim or body areas that might have been missed. Your painter should also be willing to come back, in case you find any areas that did not come out as expected, or start to peel unexpectedly.
