Exterior Colors for Our New House

Want to see what exterior colors we chose for our new home? Watch the video below. I reveal our siding, trim, and front door colors, as well as other finishes we selected for the exterior of our new mid-century style house.

Continue reading for more pictures and details about our exterior color choices.

I have to admit, choosing the exterior colors for our new house was a little stressful. We may have lucked out with the last lot on our street, but that brought some challenges when it came time to choose exterior colors.

In our neighborhood, you cannot have the same paint color or brick/stone as your four immediate neighbors in either direction or across the street. So, as you can imagine, the options become quite limited when you’re the last house.

To complicate matters, the front of our house is all brick. So unlike some of our neighbors that have brick only part way up, we have a lot of brick. I knew choosing a brick color would not be easy, and given the fact that we don’t like warm neutrals (like beige, brown, and red brick), I knew we’d be happier with painted brick.

Although we had to pay to upgrade to painted brick, I think it was worth it. The brick options that were remaining to choose from did not fit the vision we had for our house. Opting to paint the brick eliminated a tough decision for us.

I would have loved a white painted brick exterior on the front of our house, but unfortunately, there is a modern farmhouse across the street that is all white. We were not allowed to choose white.

Our next thought was to go with a beautiful dark gray, similar to the illustration of our elevation. But that idea was soon dashed…

The existing house next to our lot and the other one being built are both mid-dark gray colors. We did not want to add another “dark gray” house to the street. Plus, it turns out, the only other house in the neighborhood with the same modern elevation as us, painted their house a medium gray (see it in this video).

We wanted something different.

Trim Color

While we had no idea what to pick for the siding and brick color, we knew for sure we wanted crisp white trim. We chose SW 7006 Extra White for our trim and the board and batten on the front of the house.

Front Door Color

We also knew we wanted to have fun with the front door. For our elevation, we get this modern front door with four satin etched glass panes. I knew it had to be teal or turquoise. Are you surprised?

I collected a bunch of samples to choose from. I knew I didn’t want the color to be too green or too dark. To select the final color, I compared the samples to my turquoise decor, like these rugs that I love and our toaster oven (yes, I have a turquoise toaster oven).

I want the front door of our new house to be a preview of what to expect on the inside. SW 6766 Mariner was the clear winner. Our front door will look like this:

With the trim and front door color chosen, we went back to the drawing board on the siding and brick color.

Brick and Siding Color

The first thing I did was mockup several options in photoshop…even a crazy blue option. I have this thing for gorgeous, dark blue houses. But it didn’t feel right to paint brick dark blue.

Then, we found our inspiration house. It’s another house in our neighborhood, but it’s far away from ours and a different style. It has crisp white trim and the prettiest pale gray siding. It’s far away from where our house will be, so I knew there wouldn’t be a color conflict.

The only trick was matching the color. For that, I fired up my trusty Nix color sensor and went on a little color recon mission.

I snuck up to the house from the alley and used the Nix pressed against the siding to match the color. I was able to match it to SW 7662 Evening Shadow.

From there, I went to Sherwin Williams and got samples of our three color choices to make sure they looked good together.

We loved our choices, but we still had to get them approved by the builder and Homeowner’s Association.

Our First Design Appointment

Our first appointment at the design center was to pick our exterior colors. We went in with an open mind, but boy am I glad we did our homework. We let the designer show us the available brick options, but we hated them all which confirmed our decision to paint the brick.

Then the designer presented us with a handful of pre-approved color combinations. We took a look, just in case there was a combo similar to what we wanted. Unfortunately, most of the options included a medium to dark gray siding color, which we did not want based on our neighbors’ house colors.

We had the opportunity to customize the pre-approved palettes, but even if we wanted to change just the door color, the cost to customize was $500. Even our designer admitted, at that point, we might as well customize the whole palette for the same $500. So, we gave her our color samples, and she submitted them for approval. We didn’t hear back until our final design appointment over three weeks later.

Thankfully, they approved our color choices. I’m so excited!

Our Final Exterior Color Choices

The brick on the front and the siding around the back will be light gray (SW 7662 Evening Shadow). The trim, porch columns, and vertical siding will be bright white (SW 7006 Extra White). The front door will be turquoise (SW 6766 Mariner) with satin etched glass.

We also got to choose a few other unique elements for the exterior of our home.

• We upgraded to black iron horizontal railing on the front porch.

• Instead of shingles on the roof over the porch, we upgraded to a standing-seam metal roof. We chose charcoal gray for the metal roof.

• On the back of the house, we upgraded the garage door to a modern flat panel style. We discovered this garage door style in another community where our builder has all modern elevations. In that community, the modern garage door is standard. They also get modern cylinder exterior lights.

For our community, we had to pay to upgrade the garage door and exterior light fixtures. The community standard is a raised panel garage door and traditional-style exterior lights. Maybe it seems silly to upgrade the alley-facing side of our house, but we figured that the garage will be our main entrance to the home and we want it to fit the modern aesthetic.

I can’t wait to see all these colors and finishes come together. It’s weird to choose colors for a house that doesn’t even exist yet. Thankfully, I have an active imagination and I can picture every detail. (Of course, the samples and mockups help.)