How to Pick a Color for a Home Addition
If you’re adding on to your house, you have a conundrum:
You’ll never be able to match your existing siding perfectly. Materials age, altering the appearance of colors. Or they simply aren’t able to be replicated.
If you try to match, but it’s not exact, it will be obvious. Thus, you need to coordinate.
In the image below, a homeowner needed to pick a siding color to sit beside their lovely patterned brick exterior.
The image above is what I would have done: a beige with red undertones to blend with the front door and the reddish roof.
Here’s what was selected. A taupe that looks too sharp and slight green with the existing colors.
There are a couple ways you can avoid this situation:
Get as many siding samples as you can and view them on your property, next to your home (not in the store, not inside).
Hold the samples vertically, because that is how they will be seen when installed on your home’s exterior. (Light bounces off surfaces differently at different angles, sometimes changing our perception of color.)
Don’t assume a neutral goes with everything. Neutrals are some of the hardest colors to coordinate.
When in doubt, call a professional. For projects like this that require fewer decisions (versus a complete overhaul of trim, windows, doors, multiple siding materials, etc), a color consultant may simply charge an hourly rate.
A professional opinion can take the stress and emotion out of decision-making and ensure your expensive addition blends with your home.