How to choose exterior colors for a classic home

Pick exterior colors in this order: read the materials you can’t change, give each color a job, let the architecture set the palette, check it against the street, allow for daylight, then test big samples on the house. A list of trendy colors can’t tell you what suits a brick Georgian or a stucco Tudor. This method can, whether you’re planning a full exterior repaint or just a new door and shutters.

Start with what you can’t change

Before you look at a paint chip, walk around the house and list everything that isn’t getting painted: roof, brick, stone, foundation, driveway, walks, patio, vinyl windows. Most of it will outlast more than one paint job, so the paint has to agree with it. If the roof is due for replacement, choose the shingle first.

Then read the undertones: nearly every fixed material leans toward yellow, orange, red, green, blue or violet. Red brick can run orange or toward a cooler blue-red. A “gray” roof often turns out green-gray, brown-gray or nearly blue once paint sits beside it. Mortar counts too, since it sits right next to your trim.

Undertones show up in comparison, so hold samples right against each material, outdoors, in daylight. As a rule, pair warm with warm and cool with cool, and break that rule only on purpose. (Painting brick or stone is very hard to undo, so this guide assumes yours stays unpainted.)

How many colors does a house need?

Most classic houses need three, and each one has a job.

• Body: the siding, shingles or stucco. It covers the most surface and sets how light or dark the house reads from the street.
• Trim: corner boards, window and door casings, fascia, soffits, cornices and porch rails. Trim draws the architecture.
• Accent: the front door and shutters, sometimes the window sash. These are small areas, which is why they can carry a deeper or bolder color.

Next, decide how much contrast the house can carry. High contrast (white trim on a deep body, black shutters on white siding) draws a line around every window and corner. On a symmetrical house with good detail, that line reads as order. On a house with mismatched windows or a boxy addition, it advertises the mismatch.

Low contrast, with trim a few shades off the body, calms a busy front and lets the overall shape lead. Neither is more correct; it depends on how much detail is worth outlining.

Which colors suit your home’s style?

Let the style set the palette. Grosse Pointe and the older suburbs of Metro Detroit have many period revival houses from the early-to-mid 20th century, and each style suits a particular range of colors. Start there, then adjust for your house.

Colonial Revival

Symmetry is the point: a centered door, evenly spaced windows, often a pediment or fanlight over the entry. Two palettes are hard to get wrong: a crisp white body with black or deep green shutters, or a deeper body (a smoky blue-gray, a warm putty, a dark olive) with white trim. The front door is the place to be confident: a lacquer red, a deep navy, a blackened green. Plainer post-war Colonials, with less trim to show off, often look more settled with less contrast.

Tudor Revival

A Tudor is light infill against dark timber. Choose a warm off-white or cream for the stucco, one that sits comfortably beside any brick or stone, and a dark brown or near-black for the half-timbering; stark white tends to look harsh in that company. Then keep the timber color identical everywhere it appears. Mismatched browns from years of spot repairs break the pattern into pieces.

Georgian and other brick homes

On a brick Georgian, the brick is the body color, so the painting happens in the trim, cornice, windows and doors, where the house keeps its finest detail. Choose the white against brick and mortar together: a creamy white with a touch of warmth usually flatters red brick, while a stark, blue-leaning white can look chalky. Doors, shutters and window sash look right in black or a deep green. The same logic works on any brick-front house.

Craftsman

Craftsman houses were meant to look rooted in their setting, so their palettes come from soil, bark and moss. Start with an earthy body (olive, ochre, a warm brown), then add two or three supporting colors for trim, window sash and details like rafter tails and brackets. Pull them from the brick or stone of the porch piers. Where the walls mix shingles and clapboard, a slightly different shade on each looks intentional.

French Eclectic

Steep hipped roofs, walls of stucco, brick or stone, sometimes a round tower: this style wants a quiet palette. Put soft whites and stone tones on the walls, a muted blue-gray or gray-green on shutters and doors, and black on any ironwork. Aim for limestone and weathered wood. Hard black-and-white contrast tends to fight the style.

Mid-century ranch

A ranch is long, low and horizontal, and the palette should run with those lines, not chop them up. Keep the body restrained (a warm gray, a soft taupe, a deep charcoal), carry one trim color along the whole roofline, and paint a street-facing garage door the body color so it recedes. Then spend your boldness in one place, usually the front door: a saturated teal, a sunny yellow, an orange-leaning red.

Should your house match the neighbors?

Harmonize, don’t copy. Walk the block and look at your house as one in a row. If both neighbors are white with black shutters, a third identical house disappears, while a soft gray-green with cream trim keeps the rhythm and still reads as yours.

Planting counts too: a deep green body behind mature evergreens can all but vanish. Before you commit, find out whether anyone has to approve the change; some homeowners associations and historic districts have a say in exterior colors.

Why does paint look lighter outside?

Daylight is far stronger than the light you study chips under indoors. Outside, paint usually reads lighter and brighter than the chip, and color intensifies with area, so a softly saturated chip can look loud across a whole wall. That’s why many designers go one step darker on the same color strip, and pick body colors a little more muted than the look they want.

Light reflectance value (LRV) puts a number on lightness: how much light a color reflects, on a scale from 0 (perfect black) to 100 (perfect white). You’ll usually find it on the back of the chip or the manufacturer’s website. Similar numbers read as low contrast side by side; widely separated numbers read as high contrast.

The extremes have costs. Very light colors can glare in full sun. Very dark ones absorb more heat, tend to show fading sooner and can warp vinyl siding, so check the siding maker’s guidance before going dark.

Exposure shifts the same color from wall to wall. South and west walls take the strongest sun, so paint there looks lighter and warmer. North walls sit in cool, indirect light, so the same paint reads darker and grayer, sometimes bluer. East walls glow in the morning and go flat by afternoon.

Sheen matters too: glossier finishes tend to look a touch deeper and richer, except where they catch glare. Our paint sheen guide explains the trade-offs.

How should you test exterior paint colors?

Start on screen, finish on the house. Our Color Studio lets you sketch body, trim, shutter and door combinations in real Sherwin-Williams colors on an illustrated Colonial, a quick way to see whether a palette hangs together. No screen shows true paint color, though, so use it to narrow the field to two or three palettes, then buy real samples.

1. Go big. Paint each sample at least two feet square, on boards you can move.
2. Use more than one side. Try every sample on a sunny elevation and a shaded one.
3. Test in context. Hold body samples against the trim, roof and brick; trim samples against the body; door colors at the door.
4. Watch the light. Look in the morning, at midday and in the evening, and on an overcast day if one comes along.
5. Judge from the curb. Cross the street. That’s how far away most people see your house, and where colors blend and soften.

Settle the palette early, because Michigan’s exterior painting season is short (our guide to when to paint an exterior in Michigan covers the timing). Once you commit, write down each color’s maker, name, number, sheen and surfaces, for touch-ups and the next repaint.

Go deeper

• Choosing a Sherwin-Williams white — for body or trim.
• Color schemes for Colonial homes — six proven combinations.
• Tudor house colors — stucco, timber and trim.
• How to choose shutter colors — and when to skip them.
• Navy exterior paint colors — Naval and other deep blues.

Questions

Try these colors on a houseSketch body, trim, shutter and door colors in real Sherwin-Williams colors.→