# Brick ranch repaint help desperately needed



## Just Bill (Dec 21, 2008)

I prefer earth tone colors, but decorators give color suggestions, I always leave those to the owner. What's the matter with white???


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## w112ces (May 11, 2010)

Nothing's the matter with white, I just don't like it in on this house. It seems washed out. Perhaps if we were able to come up with a nice accent color for the shutters, it wouldn't bother me, but on the whole it just seems like a safe cop out. 

I'm leaning toward earthtones too at this point -- what would you suggest?


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## Barelythere (May 18, 2010)

*Brick ranches are a pain!!*

I had the same issue with our brick ranch...lots of different colors going on (orange-tan brick, blue-gray roof) and a relatively small (and awkward!) amount of siding that could be painted. I went through many different color combos before realizing a few things. 

1)It's tempting to paint that small amount of siding a color that you are drawn to BUT the house will look much more cohesive (and take an accent color better) if you paint the siding to match the brick as closely as possible. Then you are not drawing attention to the fact that the entire house isn't brick. 

I trained myself to think of the brick color AS the house color. Period.

If your home wasn't brick, you probably wouldn't paint the bottom half of your house one color, and then paint the top half a different color. Some brick/stone houses have symetrical areas of siding (and a lot of it) so it looks OK to paint it a different color--but this is not the case with most from the 50's-60's!

2)Add your color in the garage door, the front door, shutters/flower boxes/pots, and the trim. It will really stand out and look nice against a cohesive background. 

I would go with a deep gray blue-gray green-- (some sort of a cool neutral that works with the roof) for ALL the trim, doors, shutters, etc. You could even use varying shades off the same color strip and it will still work better than adding more colors to the mix. For instance, a medium grayish green for the trim/shutters/garage door and the darkest gray-green on the strip for the front door.

This is one of my favorite examples of orange-y brick with gray-green accents...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alamosquare/2147185455/ 

It's not to say that a different color (funky lime?) front door wouldn't be OK if that appeals to you. ( It does to me but I'm too scared to try it  )

Good luck!

P.S. You can use the color visualizer on SherwinWilliams.com to get an idea of what a color combo will look like. Although the colors onscreen often look nothing like the chip...it gives you an idea of what category of color you want.


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