Holy smokes! Who knew that white paint for our exterior color was going to be such a tough choice to make? This decision alone required two separate trips back to Kentucky just to make sure it’s exactly what we want. In today’s post, we are going to get into the colors we started with, why we picked a few new colors to sample, and what we went with for our final color choice!
Building a home on the opposite side of the country has not been an easy task. I mean, I definitely miss out on seeing the progress day-to-day but choosing small detail decisions has been really tough for me. Relying on pictures and videos is hard enough when selecting stone and brick joints (aka mortar detail) but try selecting a paint color that will cover your entire home! I wanted to step away from the super bright whites and into a creamier option that would have a longer lifetime style-wise. So, let’s take a look at what we started with and why we chose to take a different route at the end.
The image above is from our first paint sample meeting I had with our builders over a month ago. We weren’t sure exactly what color we were looking for, so our designer (Toni of Dovetail Design Studio) selected a few different tones to help get a better idea of the direction we wanted to head towards. I have labeled this image with the paint colors so that we can refer back to it as we compare to the new paint options. We were pretty quick to eliminate Alabaster. It’s a really pretty white for interior but outside it’s really bright. We also eliminated Origami White because it read way too gray. Then, we thought that White Duck was too brown but it was so hard to tell when it was next to the other more cooler whites. And then we added in the fourth paint sample (Greek Villa) after seeing another house in the same city that our builders had worked on previously. But I still had such a hard time fully committing to a final paint color without really getting a good look at it next to all the other house features. So, Heller Built set up a new paint sample for us on a different side of the house. I mean, those are some incredible builders right there.
These next two pictures show the final three paint samples on two different walls to get a really good idea of what each color looks like in different light. The top sample is Greek Villa, the middle sample is Oyster White, and the bottom is White Duck. Isn’t it wild to see how different the first and last samples look from the previous sample? These pictures also included five different brick joints, which we will get into in another post because I did not think I would’ve chosen what I did a few months ago. So it’s interesting to see how different the colors look on each brick joint too! I know it sounds crazy, but these colors can change so drastically especially from interior to exterior. Let me show you what I mean.
The pictures below show each of the final three paint color choices in a paint swab as well as on an entire home exterior. This is what I kept referring to when I was trying to paint a decision online from across the country. Now do you see why it was so hard to narrow down what I wanted?
The picture above is the top paint in our final sample – Greek Villa. In the paint swab at the top, it looks like the perfect creamy white but when you bring it outside it looks so much more white! It’s a little harder to tell the color on the house in this picture because of the really gray roof. Either way, it looks so much more white in our sample too! Crazy!
This second sample is Oyster White, which was the middle option on the final sample that was painted on our house. It is the creamiest of all three options and I wanted to paint this alongside of White Duck to see if it still read as brown as it did in the first round of samples. Isn’t it so pretty in this picture? I love the creamy next to the dark gray or beige windows too. So good!
The final sample is White Duck, which is the one I thought was too brown a month ago! Ugh! Paint colors are hard! Just look at that paint swab? Isn’t it wild to see it painted on this house? Again, this house has a darker roof and dark windows so it reads really white here too but it’s still really pretty.
So at this point, I’m sure you aren’t as annoyed as I was trying to pick the perfect white but at least you can see what I was going through while trying to choose the perfect one while living in Arizona. And don’t worry, I won’t make you wait any longer to find out what I chose… (drum roll please) … WHITE DUCK! I think it’s the best choice and honestly the safest without going too creamy and regretting it on the other end. So we did it! Thank the Lord! And now we get started on the brick this week! One step closer to completion!
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