

In the west we tend to want to add several claddings to our exteriors. Cedar or hardy board siding, with brick along the bottom, maybe a stone feature in a gable…then we add multiple colours to the trim, garage door etc. It can be a lot of look, cost a ton, and end up looking a bit like a patchwork quilt.
In many places of the world, they have a tighter aesthetic, a neighbourhood (or perhaps whole town) will all have the same clay roof. Houses are clad in a uniform material, and then vary the paint colour within a cohesive palette.
I am starting to think our abundance of choice in the west creates a cacophonous look in our neighbourhoods, and I’m on a mission to help you see that less is more on your exterior, to save you money and create a prettier looking home.
Let’s tour some European towns below:
Few of us live in historic homes and neighbourhoods, but the same principles apply when you’re updating or building a newer home. Take our home for example – a perfectly average builder basic rancher. The trend for the last 10 years has been Black and White (Modern Farmhouse), but I’m here to show you that not all white houses should have black accents.
You can see that this house DOES NOT suite the popular colour palette of this decade. But before moving on I want to show you that even a house built in a Farmhouse Style doesn’t always suite a heavy dose of black.
The black and white trend began as a crisp, fresh take but has morphed into something a lot less sophisticated. Read on to be sure you don’t fall into this trap!
Back to my builder basic!
Having multiple colours on a facade makes a small house look even smaller. If you have a white house, your trim should be white. If you opt for a coloured trim, it gives the effect that you wanted to have a house in that colour but chickened out so just did the trim.
If the brick hadn’t already been painted I may have kept that natural, but since it was painted I decided to colour match the body of the house and paint out the brick and trim all in the off-white colour of the house (Behr Chic Grey).
We also painted the black door a navy blue (Farrow and Ball Hague Blue) and added a brass plate to dress up a simple fibreglass door.
That made a big difference – but the garage door now stood out like a sore thumb. After getting it replaced (it was having issues), I primed and painted the new door in Behr Chic Grey as well.
It can be in certain circumstances, but if you live in a home where the garage faces the street and acts as most of the facade of the home, most of the time I lean towards painting the garage door out in the body colour so that it makes the home feel more seamless and larger. Keep in mind, whatever feature you accent you are telling people what to notice. Most garage doors are not the star of the show. I’d rather make the landscaping and the front door the feature, and maybe also lighting.
Case in point below – how impactful was upgrading the light fixtures?? But as it goes, this made the street numbers stand out, so I decided to strip the grey paint off to repeat the brass. (The snowball effect of renos!)
Ba-da bing, ba-da BOOM!
Stunning! Who paints over natural patina like that? Straight to jail! #kiddingnotkidding
The brown roof used to bother me with all the grey before. Now with this cleaner, warmer palette it fits right in, don’t you think?
Another great example of Less is More in exteriors was a recent client of ours who wanted to update her exterior after renovating her interior. She thought she’d have to replace the stone and maybe the siding ($$$$$) but I suspected that if we got the trim colour right the house colour and the stone would look right at home. One paint colour later and she has a WHOLE NEW HOUSE.
Can you even believe this was just 1 paint colour?? It doesn’t look like the same building!
The power of paint people. In this case we painted the garage door out in the same colour as the trim. That’s another way to help it blend, but I wouldn’t have done an accent colour here.
All the woodwork in the gable was an area the client assumed we’d need to have at least a couple colours – but by painting the fascia, cedar shakes, beams, board and baton out in the same colour, all that busy woodwork sort of fades away. Like magic!
So many houses would have been better off to just omit the stone the builder was offering.
I was chatting with a friend of mine who’s building a house, and she was agonizing over all the decisions to make for her exterior, stone being the most stressful one. I saved her 5 digits with one remark back.
“You know, you don’t have to add a stone.”
Most people don’t realize that you can opt out and get that money back. And when you do, put it towards your landscaping, it will pay you back in spades!
Here’s a couple more examples of houses that would have been better off without a stone belt line.
The below picture exemplifies a simple, sophisticated and timeless exterior that is actually cheaper than the above examples!
One siding material. Chunky trim all in one colour, an accent front door and landscaping. Charming and forever in vogue.
Here’s an example of farmhouse done tastefully and classic. This home will not trend out like the farmhouse with the stone and a lot of black shown above.
You may have your heart set on stone, so here’s my recommendation. The least trendy stone is Limestone (or a manufactured Limestone). It goes with all styles, it’s soft and it’s not super busy, it allows for the largest paint colour palette should you want to make a change down the road to the house body. Placement of stone is an equally important decision. If you have a peaked home, it can be very successful to fill one peak with stone, and then run the stone along the home’s waterline. But speak to a professional about your homes specific architecture before pulling the trigger on a big investment like masonry.
If you liked this blog entry, catch more exterior tips in a previous blog we did here.
There’s so much to say on this topic, if you have a specific style of house you’d like me to speak to, mail that in and I may do a blog post detailing my top tips in your scenario!
If you need help with your facade, check out our interior design consulting in order to select the best colours for your exterior to hire a renovation contractor for the work itself, check out our renovation page on our site and book a Free Discovery Call below to get started today!
Until then, stay classy on your exteriors, Kelowna! 😉
Meghan