Living in Color: Selecting Home Exterior Colors That Make Everyone Happy

By Kate Smith, DaVinci Roofscapes.

How to create a home with colors you love and keep your homeowner's association (HOA) happy. 

Finding the perfect color for your home’s exterior can be difficult. Just when you think you’ve chosen the perfect color, your HOA hates it. Or maybe your HOA has already made this choice for you, and you find yourself trying to pick from a handful of greys. 

One in four homeowners claim the rules of their HOA prohibits them from freely choosing exterior colors. In some cases, a homeowners’ association will even go so far as to limit the color choices to a few preselected colors that match the neighborhood. 

Playing nice 

It is understandable that in order to maintain property values and goodwill within the community you don’t want to have “that house” in your neighborhood. The one that clashes with everyone else’s home and stands out like a sore thumb, causing neighbors to be concerned that this one house will bring down the image of the neighborhood and thus the value of their own homes. To ease homeowners’ concern about this happening in their neighborhood, homeowner’s associations have imposed color restrictions. 

While this could be a good solution, most HOA’s have limited the colors to such a small selection that they are keeping their residents from creating a home with colors they love. The covenants imposed by some homeowner’s organization are holding colors hostage in an effort to create conformity rather than individuality. 

This is unfortunate since having a home with a striking exterior can be both an asset and source of pride for its owners. Anyone that understands color knows that just about any color can work in any community. The key is finding a version of the color that blends with the neighborhood or stands out in a subtle, unobtrusive manner. Rather than offer three to six exterior siding color choices, as is common with many HOA’s, they could offer an entire rainbow of colors of similar value and intensity that all work beautifully together. 

Thoughts for HOA leaders 

In many cases, I have found that homeowners who paint their homes in a color their neighbors consider too bright were actually going for a subtler look. However, they didn’t understand how much bolder the color would look when applied to their home. Once completed, it is unlikely anyone will repaint a home exterior, even if they are not completely happy with the results. 

Rather than keep a homeowner from using the color they love, the palette of approved colors could serve as guidance to help the homeowner choose colors that will work well on their homes. For example, if a homeowner wants yellow, the HOA guidelines could be altered to help them to choose a buttery yellow that fits in with the other home colors, rather than a hue that will end up looking more like highlighter yellow and seem out of place in the community. 

For many years, developers and HOA’s have defaulted to a range of beiges and grays for the main exterior, trim, shutter and door colors. I believe this has happened because they don’t know how to offer more choices and still create a cohesive look. If this is the case in your neighborhood, try approaching the HOA with some different color ideas. Failing that, you will have to live with their limited color offering and bring your favorite colors into your curb appeal aspect with your landscaping or outdoor decor. 

If you your HOA is willing to review your color offering and expand the color selection, a skilled color consultant can help. There’s an entire range of colors that a consultant can offer that will help create perfect harmony in your community. 

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Original article source: DaVinci Roofscapes