Paint color placement is equally as important as paint color selection.

A Before and After analysis of paint color application

I’ve written about this before and I’m writing about it again because very few people truly understand how important paint color placement is on your house, even if you’ve chosen really great colors, the placement can make or break the overall look.
I love painters, they take my color palettes and make them real, but painters are often perplexed by my specifications. They have a tendency to be rule bound in a way that I am not and perhaps a bit less imaginative.

I’m breaking down this Before and After of a duplex that I worked on in Vancouver to help you to see why color placement is so important.
Let’s have a look at the Before and After pictures without any of my notations.

I was very happy that the owners contacted me prior to ordering their new windows as all of them were undecided about whether to go with white or black. If we’re talking about vinyl windows then most of the time my preference will be black, I personally do not like white vinyl windows and wish they would go away, at least with black you’re making some kind of statement.
The new windows make a real difference, as you can see the visual clutter of all those criss crossing lines helps to not only update the house but to make it feel much more calm and adds a touch of elegance.
Now let’s look at a couple of before pictures with notations, so I can guide you through my process.

This pair of duplexes feels very stretched out vertically, by the way, in the above photo you’re looking at two different photos of the same side.
The eye goes to the lightest thing, so the first thing I notice is the visual clutter of the windows, but when I look at the picture long enough my eye keeps landing on the white gutters.
There’s a lot of dark trim that is accentuating the height of the duplex. The dark trim along the windows is dominant and pulls your eye straight up to the roofline without getting much of a sense of the rest of the house. I wanted to change this, I wanted to play down the height and create a sense of a house that has three different floors. If we simply followed the painters advice of painting all trim in trim color and all body in body color we would never have been able to achieve the look that I wanted and that I also knew would look much better and make it feel more harmonious and elegant.
Let’s take a look at the after pictures with notations to see what we did.

In the after picture we have a much better sense of the house having distinct levels.
By painting the trim between the windows in the body color we were able to diminish the exaggerated height and create more width. Additionally, we reduced visual clutter by painting the corner trim in the body color.
By painting the gutters in the trim color (something the painter did not want to do) a solid roof line is created. The gutters lead directly into the window trim and harmonize with the roof color itself.
There’s a bit of downpipe that is resting on the roof, too bad I didn’t get a chance to see this before the painters finished, I most certainly would have told them to paint it the trim color so that it disappears.

When thinking about color placement you have to be clear on what you want to draw the eye to. I always attempt to do two things when I work with my clients.
1-I love to create color palettes that have just the right amount of contrast, for me this gives a very yummy, elegant and calm feel.
2-I want to draw attention to the most important inherent architectural details.
You don’t want to draw the eye to downpipes and gutters, with the exception of real copper, these elements are rarely attractive and they’re add-ons, put in place to manage water flow.
Remember, the eyes are the windows to the soul and on a house the windows are the eyes, which is why they’re a feature we usually want to draw attention to.
Let’s finish off with just a couple more photos. Firstly, the after photo all on it’s own.

And I can’t resist showing you a photo of the entrance door which is located down the side of the duplex.

Hello and welcome!!