Community Meets Luxury
Sleight Farm’s blog about building a custom home and living in Dutchess County, NY.
How To Choose an Exterior Color for Your New Home
June 16, 2022
Building a custom home in a new construction neighborhood has many perks. Choice is a big one. Choosing your home site, home model, floor plan, and other options help you design a house that fits your style and needs. But as we all know, too much choice can be overwhelming.
One of the big decisions you’ll make as a new home buyer is which exterior color you want. Home builders like LMD Homes purposely offer a limited selection of exterior colors. This helps make that decision easier while also creating aesthetic unity in the neighborhood as a whole.
Here are some tips for ending up with an exterior home color choice you’ll be happy with:
Consider what you can’t paint or change
Ask yourself a few questions:
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Will your home have permanent exterior elements like brick or stone?
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What are the roof materials?
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Will you have surrounding hardscaping, plantings, or natural landscape?
These types of unchanging features should be a big consideration when you choose an exterior color. A color that looks great by itself on your home’s siding or trim, but clashes with a red brick chimney or gray stone foundation, may end up creating a not-so-pleasing image overall. Your home’s permanent elements are “what you have to work with” and your color choices will ideally make the most of them, rather than be in competition.
View your options in natural light
A color that looks fantastic in a sales center may look very different once it covers the outside of your new home. Sunlight and shadow, and even the surrounding environment and structures, will alter the way a color looks to your eye in significant ways. You might even take a color sample, if possible, to your home site. One basic rule of thumb is: when you’re looking at colors, choose shades that are a little darker and a little warmer than your initial picks. In sunlight, the colors will appear brighter and cooler, and will likely end up closer to the ones that first drew you in.
Remember that you’ll have more choice on interior features
Your new home’s exterior will be the face it shows the world, but the interior walls, fixtures, flooring, and other elements are the colors that will surround you every day. They’ll have more of an impact on how you feel in your home, and possibly how you feel in general! If the exterior color choices feel too limited, tell your inner creative spirit that it will have a chance to express itself in other ways.
Your home builder, sales representative, or realtor are also great sources of advice and expertise.
We hope your entire new home building experience is positive, fun, and the stuff of dreams come true!