When choosing colors for your home, we tend to emphasize the interior than the exterior.  I think the rationale is that you spend the majority of your time inside, and that’s where you really ‘live.’  While this is true, the flip side is that the curb appeal and how well your home presents itself reflects on you and the neighbors, am I right? So here are some tips to consider when choosing exterior paint colors for your home.

Before deciding to pick the right paint colors for the exterior of your home, you need to consider the architectural style and era it is built upon. For example, is your home based on midcentury modern ranch design? Or is it based on Queen Anne Victorian design?

Whichever the design, make sure the style you pick feels appropriate for it. After all, you wouldn’t want to see a pale mint green color on your New England Saltbox style home, now would you?

If you’re fresh out of ideas, don’t worry. There are many exterior paint inspirations on the internet to help you.

If you’re not entirely renovating your home, surrounding surfaces such as tiles, roof shingles, driveways, and stonework are going to be constant. So if you want an exterior paint color to fully complement your home and surroundings, you have to consider this.

Carefully observe the undertones between the surroundings and see if it will help you pick a suitable palette. For example, if the colors surrounding your home are primarily dark (brown, rust, beige) – you will probably want to pick colors that produce a harmonious effect.

Getting the right shades while choosing exterior paints is one of the most challenging parts of this task. Ideally, you would want to have an exterior paints palette that is made up of three parts – the field color, the accent color, and the trim color.

Here’s what each means.

• Field color. The color on your palette will dominate the scheme.

• Accent color. It is the color that will give life to the doors and shutters of the home.

• Trim color. It helps bring the windows, roof edging, railings, and other trim to life.

The basic idea is to choose a trim color that strongly contrasts with the field color. If you want a modern look for your home, you could also pick only two colors.

One of the best ways to make your home stand apart from others and increase its value – is always a good idea to consider the visual effect you want to bring with the exterior paint palette.

Try your best to choose exterior paints that put your home in a direct relationship with the landscape and street. It would help to consider whether the house is sitting back from the road or hiding behind trees.

Based on these factors, you may want to choose brighter or darker colors to help your home stand out.

Don’t Finalize the Palette After Just Looking at Paint Chips.

A lot of people make this common mistake. They get sample paint chips and think this is it. It is what they should go for. In reality, depending on paint chips never works well for exterior painting because the area to cover is larger.

Never hesitate to buy a small bucket of paint and test it around the least visible areas of your home. See how it feels in the morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Lighting plays an essential role in bringing colors out, so make sure you see the paint in every light condition before finalizing the paint.