Ideas for Exterior House Painting

Consider Your Architectural Style

• Let the style of your home influence your color choices. An ornate Victorian home can be painted almost any combination of colors. If your home is historically significant, find out what the original paint scheme was and replicate it. Modern Southwestern homes can look fabulous in fanciful, sun-washed pastels. Cape Cod homes in seafoam greens, grays and dusky blues with crisp white trim and stately colonials in classic taupes with vibrantly painted shutters conform to can't-miss traditional colors.

  If your home is newer or without a defined style, look for elements such as Cape Cod shingle accents or plantation porches and columns and accentuate those with traditional colors. (See Resources to identify your home's architectural style and colors.)

Color in the Details

• Walk around your home and note details and interesting architectural elements. These could be shutters, wrought iron, a stately front door or a wood-shingled peak. Introduce visual interest to an otherwise conservative color scheme by painting these a third color. This can be a lighter or darker shade of the existing scheme or a complementary color like sky blue or deep lavender. Surprising color accents like this can look wonderful against rich brown or deep beige.

  An often-forgotten element when painting the exterior of a house is the visible foundation around the bottom of the house. Typically cinder-block or concrete, this needs no special preparation except for a good hosing down to remove dirt and spiderwebs; paint it with two coats of 100 percent acrylic paint. Consider a deep shade of the siding color, or even black, to define the footprint of your house and provide a backdrop to landscaping.

Choose the Best Paint

• The price difference between high-quality paint and cheap paint is minimal when you consider the extra years you'll get out of a paint job with the best paint. For most residential exterior applications, 100% acrylic (water-based) paint is the best option for durability. Don't be tempted to skimp on quality.

  Bear in mind that the higher the paint sheen, the more surface irregularities will show. Unless your siding and trim are in very good condition, using the lowest sheen possible, like flat for the siding and satin for the trim, will look the best.

  Always buy quarts of your intended color scheme and paint them directly on the house before purchasing the rest of the paint. The color on the paint chip can look very different when up on your house.