Colour Dilemma - External Colour Selection

Just when we thought that we had reached the end of the "design and selection" tunnel, we have reached one more stumbling point - we have failed developer approval because we chose one colour for our front façade:

“A minimum of two materials or colours must be used in the primary street elevation (excludes windows and garage doors). “

To be honest, I do not see why the garage cannot be taken into account. Garage doors offer a significant contribution to a given house’s street appeal. This is especially so in those cases where it is painted in a feature colour or is constructed using a feature (expensive) material.



Our current external colour selection.

I can understand the developer not wanting the estate to appear boring, but I think they need to be careful, too many colours and materials can easily look tacky and become out dated.

Do you think our front facade is boring? I would have termed it conservative, perhaps a little ‘traditional' compared to some of the modern houses with lots of small square windows and architectural pillars. However you describe it, I just hope it does not become old fashioned.


If you were us, and were forced to add an additional colour to the front rendering of our house, what would you paint and what colour would you use? I have included a picture of our front elevation which has the different renderable areas marked, so that we are on the same page regarding terminology.


The various sections of our front elevation



So far, we have received the following suggestions (thankyou) from the lovely people at the homeone forum and Decorating Forum. What do you think?



Big shout out to mimi23, Anna and kdgirl. Thankyou for your suggestions!

Plans - Elevation

Front elevation

Rear elevation

Left elevation

Right elevation

Milestone: External Colour Selection

Personally, I found choosing the external colours a lot harder than choosing the internal colours. The front of our house is different to the display home. Therefore, I find it difficult to imagine what it is going to look like, let alone visualise it painted with the colours suggested by Ventura’s consultant.

To help with my visualisation issues, I scanned the plans for our front elevation and created a “black line master” using Microsoft Paint, which I could then colour in when we got home.

"Black Line Master" for our version of the Rendezvous

If you would like me to make a tutorial on how to do this, feel free to ask via the comments section.

The exterior component of our colour consultation revolved primarily around the front elevation. We decided to choose varying shades of grey for the render and metalwork. Ventura’s colour consultant said this would help to tie the outside areas with the inside areas as it keeps with the white, grey/silver, black colour scheme used for the interior.

Prior to the meeting, the only shade of grey we had decided upon was the colour of the roof. Choosing the roof colour was easy; there were plenty of examples to look at during our daily commute.

The colour we chose was Windspray. We wanted a colour that was dark enough so that it would not look dirty during the winter, but not so dark that it would absorb of heat during summer.

Tip: If you are interested in thermal efficiency, the Colorbond website lists each of their roof colours along with the associated thermal classifications.

Thanks to our sales consultant Mike Tanner, we received a free upgrade to Colorbond guttering and downpipes (much appreciated!). This meant that the majority of colour selections came from the Colorbond colour pallet. We decided to continue this trend by choosing a render colour from this pallet also.

The colours that were chosen for the front elevation were Surfmist, Windspray and Monument. These three colours are very modern. The consultant recommended arranging them as follows:

Exterior colour scheme as suggested by Ventura’s colour consultant.

This colour scheme is not for the faint hearted due to the high level of contrast between the light main render and the dark project render and portico infill. It was not until I had created the above image that we realised just how light Surfmist is. We wanted a light grey house with a grey roof and dark gutters. Therefore, we decided to change the main render colour to Shale Grey.

Based on this new colour trio, we set about colouring in our “Black Line Master.” We managed to narrow the options down to the following two colour schemes:

Option One: Retain the bold highlights.



Option Two: Remove the bold highlights



In the end, we decided to use the more conservative Option 2. Therefore, our finalised external colour selection appears as follows:

Windspray roof; facia;  portico infill; front door; and,  garage door

Monument gutters

Shale Grey main render project render

Update (08/08/2011): Silly me forgot to mention what colour pavers we will be using for our driveway. If you had not guessed already, we will be using charcoal with a grey border.