Designing the exterior of your home can be an exciting prospect. However, it can also be quite daunting. There are many roof and house color combinations, all with their own appeal. Every expert has a different opinion, and every online exterior decorating source has an array of inspiring options to present.
How do you make your way through all the options and pick the best colors for your home? It starts by examining what you have now and moving forward from there. While many people like to focus on the siding, it’s the little details, like the roof, door, and trim that really tie the whole look together.
How do you coordinate your door with your home’s roof, and how can you ensure that it complements the siding? Let’s get into it.
Assessing the Details
It’s no secret that most homes play with neutral colors, like whites, beiges, greys, and soft blues. They’re more universally appealing, and they’re much easier to coordinate with. Siding materials, like natural stone, stucco, wood, and white board and batten play into this neutral color spectrum. Other siding materials like vinyl and fiber cement allow the homeowner to select which color they want their home to be.
According to a USA Today piece, white is the most popular color right now for exterior siding. People are even painting their brick white. When it comes to roofs, asphalt shingles remain a top choice for homeowners.
Asphalt shingles come in a variety of colors, including black, grey, green, red, blue, and even blends. And asphalt isn’t the only option out there. There are tiled roofs, wooden roofs, metal roofs, solar shingles, and more.
To coordinate your roof and door to the rest of your home, you first need to identify where you are now. What color is your current siding? What’s your current roof color? Do you have plans to redo the siding or roof? Or, do you merely want to complement what’s already there?
No matter where you’re at, there are some go-to, winning combinations that can help narrow down your search.
Winning Color Combinations
When it comes to selecting your primary house colors, you have a couple of options. You can try and match shades. In other words, make your roof color match your siding color. Or, you can go for contrasting tones, where your roof and siding are contrasting, complementary colors.
It’s more popular to choose different, complementary colors for your home’s roof and siding. However, if you want to match the colors, it can create a dramatic effect. If you decide to go with contrasting, there are a few, surefire colors that go well together.
- If you have white siding, go for black, green, grey, brown, blue, or red roofing.
- If you have brown siding, go for green, blue, charcoal, or roofing in a different shade of brown.
- If you have red siding, go for black, dark brown, dark grey, or dark green roofing.
- If you have blue siding, go for black, brown, white, or grey roofing.
- If you have grey siding, go for black, darker grey, white, dark blue, or dark green roofing.
- If you have tan or beige siding, go for black, brown, dark blue, or dark green roofing.
While these aren’t all the possible complementary combinations, it should give you an excellent springboard for inspiration. Now that we’ve discussed the roof and siding, it’s time to get into the smaller details, like the door.
There are several ways to make an impact with your door, while still coordinating it with your roof and siding.
The Finishing Touch: The Door
Once you settle on the siding and roof, it makes selecting the color for your door, trim, and other details much more straightforward. The main thing to determine is if you want these details to accent the rest of the home subtly, or whether you want it to be bold and dramatic.
The most popular colors for front doors are white, black, grey, blue, yellow, red, and wood-stained. All these colors are classic door colors that can accentuate and elevate any home exterior.
However, you can think outside the box, too. If you jump on the trend of white siding, and a deep grey roof, a bold navy door would make a sophisticated, yet daring statement. Really, any door color choice outside the classics is sure to look unique. The most critical part of selecting a door color is making sure you choose a color that is complementary to your roof and siding.
The colors can be contrasting and interesting, but you don’t want to select color combinations that are off-putting.
As far as the other details go, most of the time, homeowners make their trim white, and they paint their shutters the same color as their door to pull the whole look together.
Selecting Your Home’s Exterior Colors
Ultimately, color selection is a personal choice. It all comes down to preference. If you want to make an impression, choose a daring color for your front door. If you want to increase property value, lean towards neutrals or trending colors like white and greys.
In the end, as long as you’re pleased with the overall look, you’ve chosen a winning combination.
Matt Lee is the owner of the Innovative Building Materials blog and a content writer for the building materials industry. He is focused on helping fellow homeowners, contractors, and architects discover materials and methods of construction that save money, improve energy efficiency, and increase property value.