Color Matters

Dear Pat,
Our house needs painting, and we want to make sure that the colors we pick for the siding and trim will be “buyer friendly” when we go to sell in a few years. It’s not very exciting now, with beige stucco and white trim. We’d like to stand out from the crowd, but we don’t want any trouble selling. Any ideas you’re willing to share from a real estate point of view?
---Choosy but not Artistic

Dear Choosy, You must know by now that Pat is opinionated and always happy to share—on color matters and nearly everything else. I understand your reluctance to “express yourself” when it comes to exterior colors. Many who have undertaken to do so have wrought jarring exteriors that litter the urban landscape with bubble-gum pink or baby blue. Some well-meaning attempts at historical accuracy with golds, oranges and greens have unfortunately resulted in overly bright color schemes that would surely seem clownish to residents in a bygone era. Yet some efforts at creative color or historical interpretation have yielded stunning results, dramatically improving both the salability of the home and the image of the whole block. Is this simply a matter of innate taste? While I believe some among us do have the knack for color, most of us have to do it the hard way: by looking at pleasing examples, following some important rules, and taking the time to proceed by trial and error.

First, Choosy, pile the family into the car and drive around some toney neighborhoods, where some owners have paid designers for their color ideas. It’s always worth a look in your own neighborhood too, to get your own sense of what feels right. The palette of colors and combinations you now have in your head (or in your camera, if you’re really serious about your research) may be perfect for your own house. Or not, depending on several factors including style: bungalows always look best in earth tones, as an example; neighbors’ colors will certainly be important (obviously), and exposure, too: west facing fronts glow up nicely in the latter-day sun, so golds and reds would be enhanced more than white, for instance.

Now comes the hard part: transferring those perfect colors in your imagination to actual paint on your house. This is done through trial and error. I’ve been told many times by clients that they just “went ahead” and painted their house even though the actual paint seemed lighter, or somehow different, than the color chip they had selected. Or worse, that the color was named “Charlestown Gold” but it came out kind of a greenish yellow. Jeez, you guys—the paint companies hire underemployed English graduates to make up romantic sounding names; they don’t think “Greenish Yellow” would be much of a seller. But I digress. Buy a quart, or no more than one gallon. Paint out enough on the house to get beyond the color chip variable (that is, the chip always looks darker than the same color spread out over a wider area) and to keep the obvious contrast of the old to the new color from affecting your sense of what the new color really is. Now carefully evaluate it: is it really the rich, evocative gold you saw on that house in Kenwood? Or is it more of a screaming yellow, without character and subtlety? If you’re not happy now, do not continue to paint. Bring it back to the store and ask for help in either “doctoring” the paint with further tinting, or selecting another color from the choices available. Buy a quart; repeat process—as many times as it takes to be entirely satisfied that you’re doing the right thing. Remember, this is hugely important to you as a homeowner and a seller—yet most people spend more time selecting a couch than selecting the right exterior colors. So live up to your handle, Choosy, and call me when it’s time sell. Good luck!