What Are Craftsman Color Schemes?

Exterior Colors

• Craftsman home design was an outgrowth of architectural participation in the burgeoning Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 19th century. Architects designing Craftsman homes especially emphasized natural earth tone colors for their homes. As a result, Craftsman home exterior colors originally featured browns, red-browns, grays, greens, muted yellows and soft blues. Also, Craftsman homes were produced using a large amount of natural materials. Therefore, Craftsman home color schemes often took on the look of those materials, including slate, limestone, rock and wood.

Interior Colors

• The majority of originally produced Craftsman homes in the early 20th century emphasized harmony in interior color schemes. Architects and builders of Craftsman homes simply maintained consistency in overall color schemes when it came to interiors. Craftsman home interiors almost always avoided bright pastel and primary colors, for example. Muted colors and dusty hues when it came to Craftsman home interiors were the order of the day. Typical Craftsman interior color schemes included mixes of gray, green and brown.

Color Palettes

• Craftsman homes built in the early 20th century were constructed with the idea of a color palette in mind. A Craftsman home was always built to harmonize with its surroundings, in other words. If a Craftsman home were built next to a wooded area, exterior greens and browns (including cedar shingling for roofs) and slates would predominate. If a Craftsman home were built in the city, rust red, soft blues and slate gray or even muted yellow colors were often used.

Considerations

• When it comes to a Craftsman home, whether original or new, harmonizing exterior and interior color palettes is key. For exteriors of Craftsman homes, blending exterior color schemes to match up with the natural surrounding environment is always a winner. Interior color schemes in a Craftsman home should complement exterior colors, yet be distinctive in their own right. You can use a wide variety of natural colors on Craftsman homes, and both paints and stains are acceptable.