First of all, say “no” to impulsive decisions. Each person selects color matching in their way. One can see more clearly the inspiring photos of beautiful houses. Some prepare a computer project and go to the store for the exact shade. Others go to study the assortment to make a start in the design of the facade from what is sold and affordable. Any path is good if the decision is not made spontaneously.
How to choose a paint color for a facade
Step 1: start from the environment
Look at the colors of the natural landscape, surroundings, and buildings of neighbors. For organized development, coloristic passports are usually developed, so here the problem of choice is not so urgent – you just need to fit into the surrounding landscape. But if there is a dull and unkempt landscape around, and the building is standard you want to add color. At the same time, it is important to be aware of: do you want to attract the attention of strangers to your home (and they will stare at a bright house). Or such a task is not worth it.
Step 2: Decide on the color
Unlike interior paint, which has more than two thousand simple and composite colors, the choice of facade paint is limited to two hundred shades. There is a simple explanation for this: dyes (colors) are produced both on an organic and inorganic (mineral) basis. The former are unstable to ultraviolet light and fade. Therefore, for the facades, they take exclusively mineral ones. The range of available shades is not that wide.
Step 3: find the shade you want
Here, too, there are reservations. Light pink, light green, turquoise houses look good in pictures and are still quite new. In real life, they fade quickly. Delicate “watercolors” – covered with dust and soot, and saturated – fade in the sun, and unevenly. After a year or two, such a house begins to look like a neglected and untimely old age. Also, if the surface is imperfect, then all the defects are in plain sight: it will not work a priori to paint such a house beautifully and with high quality.
Step 4: adjust the brightness and saturation
Developers of cottage settlements with monotonous typical buildings often paint houses in pure spectral colors – those that are usually referred to as a “safe palette” in web design. And they turn out to be wrong. Bright, open spectral colors, acceptable (with reservations) in the interior, are the most “dangerous” and impractical for facades. They quickly lose their saturation and look untidy. So let’s move on to the next step.
So which facade color should you choose for your home? Let’s ask professional painters about the most popular colors.
Base color – red: Bright reds and oranges on a gray background are the most selling colors in advertising. They are appropriate if your home is your business and your guests are your customers. For example, there is a workshop on the site, you rent out premises, want to draw attention to the object and make it memorable.
Red is a fairly popular color from the Scandinavian tradition: when all the houses around are red, your red does not seem provocative. In Russia, for a private residential building, it is better to choose calm muted shades – they are not so striking.
All shades of yellow: Customers associate yellow with the sun, childhood, and holidays. Advertising, printing, and interior designers have difficulties. Often, it is the marriage in the transfer of yellow that makes the printing house reprint the circulation, and interior designers – to repaint the walls.
Simple yellow is the most unstable and impractical color: it fades and fades, it is easy to stain, all defects and roughness of the base appear through it.
Composite color has shades that people call and perceive in different ways: from mustard to lemon. But an uncritical violation of proportions during tinting is enough not to get “in color”.
The best option for the home is the yellow-orange-brown range. Or more precisely, the natural shades of sandstone, wood, ceramics.
Tip: If you want to achieve the effect of “home for all time” – “age” it in advance: choose warm natural “ceramic” colors. They are safe and discreet. If you want to refresh the exterior with bright colors – take it out not on the facades, but the details, accessories, elements of landscape design: platbands, lamps, flower beds, evergreen conifers …