Picking the right colour for your home is never an easy task. One of the biggest challenges in choosing an exterior colour is finding that perfect balance between standing out and fitting in.
Just take a walk in your neighbourhood. How many houses to do you absolutely admire? Did you observe the paint colours they used? Which houses do you dislike? Can you spot what the issue is?
Adding curb appeal can be as big as creating a new stone walkway or as small as painting the front door. There are a ton of ways to spruce up the exterior of your home on any type of budget.
Today I want to share my latest PARA Blog Crew project.
Welcome to mi casa!
As you can see my brick is orange. My garage doors are a light grey and my front door is hunter green. Nothing is horribly wrong with this picture except for the fact that it lacks an overall feeling of warmth and unity.
The problem lays mostly with the garage doors. Light grey is a cool colour. Orange is a warm colour. When you mix them together, a contrast is created causing a focus on the orange brick (and that’s not what I’m going for).
So when dealing with orange brick, one must pick a complimentary warm tone for the garage and front doors. Sticking to deep neutral colours helps create harmony in the overall palette and it also achieves that warm
and friendly curb appeal .
What I used:
I began my project with a coat of PARA exterior primer (750) to help seal in my surface and get it paint brush ready.
For the garage, I chose a rich brown colour which I pulled from the brick’s mortar. I gave it two coats of PARA exterior paint, Coconut Leaves (P5242-62).
The front door also received two coats of PARA exterior paint, Truffle Oil (P5242-85). This is a similar shade to the garage only a few shades darker.
I choose to go with a velvet finish rather than a gloss finish for two reason. One, a gloss finish will show every single flaw that is on the surface and two, a gloss finish looks dated to me (my opinion anways!).
Using outdoor paint is also super important. The pigment shields your doors from sun, wind, rain and snow making it less likely to crack and peel if applied properly.
This took us roughly one weekend to complete. And after this project, the hubs and I both agreed we need to invest in a good spray gun which will cut our time in half for all our future paint projects!
Overall, I was quite happy with our instant update. Now I just need to add some colourful flowers. Any helpers?!
Disclosure: I have been selected to be a part of the 2014 PARA Blog Crew. I am provided with PARA Paint products for specific DIY projects. All creativity, opinions and comments are entirely my own.
16 Comments
Awesome post! Thanks for sharing, it looks great.
Excellent choice on the paint colors Sabrina! It looks much more welcoming than the grey and is a real step up from the standard white. Love it!
Amazing what paint can do – or the right paint I should say. Beautiful.
Thanks for the advice.. i need to paint my front door.. it looks horrible!
WOW! What a difference! It looks so much better. Thanks for sharing these tips and info on the paint.. Great post and pics!
Wow that looks great!! Thanks for sharing.
These are some great tips. I just repainted my white front door dark navy (my house is a chocolate brown) and trimmed it in antique white. What a difference it made!
I love this! We are planning on redoing a lot of things around our front to enhance the look and I’d never thought of painting the garage doors. Now I need to go look at the options !
Great tips Sabrina! I’ve been struggling with what colors to paint my house…it’s an icky gray with black trim right now…..
Looking at buying a house. This will be a great tip to keep in mind! Thank You!
So much better when the garage doors blend in rather than stick out 🙂 Unfortunately for me, our house is white brick., so we have a boring white garage door. But I do have fun painting the front door a cool colour every couple of years 🙂
a subtle but huge difference at the same time. Looks very inviting and home-y.
Just curious, what color would you paint shutters?
I love the contrast of the brown tone with the orange brick. Thank you!
Sabrina,
What were your garage doors made of? Wood, vinyl or metal?
Great idea, my door is quite old too, I want to change the color too. The wall of my house is made of orange bricks, I have the same idea as you to choose a deep color. It will likely be blue, which contrasts gently with the bricks. Gray can also be used as a paint for your decorations to emphasize architectural details.