External Colours Help Please!

Hi Michelle and other forumites,

I have posted this message in Building a New Home, but as Michelle you are the revered guru on all things colour I thought I should put it here also.

We have been caught short on time for deciding our external colours and am seeking advise as follows:

[quote]Hi All,

We need to decide our external colour selection in a bit of a hurry and do not have the time to drive around and check out other houses as much as I would like to - so I am putting a call out to anyone for their help in considering whether our colour selections will work.

Below is the picture that we have based our facade on - this is essentially the look we are trying to achieve - though we will certainly not be able to afford the stone piers straight away so they will be brick - oh and we have a third pier being the right hand one, as our builder said we could not do it with only the two...also, we have a room out to the left of the front room(bedroom) for our ensuite, which just has a small highlite wrap around window up under the eave.

http://img408.imageshack.us/i/facadeyar ... nimag.jpg/


So we are thinking for our externals:

Roof: Colorbond Ironstone (I had always thought we would have Woodland Grey but have heard a lot lately about it having a greenish tinge, so thought would be better with Ironstone?)

Bricks: Austral Grange or PGH Oyster (Any thoughts re which? I have always loved the Oyster, but upon seeing it at PGH it looked darker than I had ever seen it look and we were worried might be too dark a contrast to our front and too dark with roof. These are considerations for us, as we are on a corner and you will see down the side of our house and over our fence, as we will only be rendering the front)

Render: Yet to be decided, but if anyone has any ideas based on what is in the picture, happy to hear them - as we will be arranging this ourselves afterwards.

Panel Lift Door: Slate Grey or Surfmist (Do people think surfmist will be too light with these colours? I guess the appeal is that it is included as a standard with our builder, whereas the slate grey is an upgrade)

Windows: Silver? (Am thinking I want the Southern Star silver - cant remember what it is called - throughout the house, but obviously in this pic they have white. Do people think the silver will be too much, or will it work?)

Front Door: Roof colour/Ironstone

Any thoughts, comments, advice, other colour suggestions etc from much more experience H1 people than us would be much appreciated!...Sorry this has been such a long post.

Thanks so much!

your links not working....

http://img408.imageshack.us/i/facadeyar ... nimag.jpg/

really need a pic, can you try again?

Thanks Michelle - sorry I am new to posting pics.

Lets try again...



Please let me know if still no luck - thanks!

more homework for you.....

Austral Grange or PGH Oyster

can you supply me the link to the colour of both these bricks?

Slate Grey is an old colour are you meaning Shale Grey?

Roof: Colorbond Ironstone

Bricks: Austral Grange or PGH Oyster

Render:

Panel Lift Door: Ironstone

Windows: Silver – YES

Front Door: Roof colour/Ironstone

Grange




Oyster

Yes so sorry I did mean shale grey.

The pics of each of the brick colours are below:

Grange


Oyster


Here are some pics of them on houses:

Grange (half bricked)


Oyster (as you can see it, it seems this brick can look very different from house to house/light)




Hope these help - thanks Michelle!

Looks like the mix of bricks are different......you need to speak to your builder about this.

I’ve got this started, will finish tomorrow night for you

Yes, I think I will ask PGH as perhaps there are different batches - I know people have posted of batch differences before with other bricks.

Thanks heaps for your help so far Michelle...much appreciated!

my pleasure....

How about Dulux Partita for your render?
It will go with both bricks and the roofing colour

Hi Michelle,

Sorry for the delay in response, we have been internet-less for the last week! Of course the week I have to do selections and not internet!...I really like the Dulux Partita render you have suggested, we will definitely have to look into that I think, I presume there will be lots of options for the lighter render on top? We have a bit of time to choose this as will be doing ourselves after handover, but want to have a bit of an idea as it may impact choice for the garage door.

Also, not to question your colour suggestions, but can I ask why you thought the darker garage door would be best. I was swaying towards shale grey or surfmist (and then to the fascias in the same colour), probably prefer the shale grey but the surfmist is standard, so were trying to get away without yet another upgrade if I could avoid it. My concern was that going with a darker door would make that the feature of the facade, rather than blending in?

Also, we have now decided on the Austral Grange brick.

Thanks!

I missed the second render colour!

I would do the bottom rendered bit darker than the Partita, and make the Partita the main render colour. I chose the darker for the garage door to help bring the roof line down, but a lighter colour will still work.

Thanks Michelle.

We went for our external colour selections tonight and I feel sick. At this point in time we have chosen:

Roof: Ironstone
Gutters: Ironstone
Fascia: Surfmist
Garage: Surfmist
Front door: Ironstone
Downpipes: Solver Hamersley
Render to Alfresco Bulkhead: Solver Hamersley
External Doors: Solver Hamersley

Firstly, I didnt realise that we would need to choose our alfresco render colour and also that it had to be a solver colour. Preferably, I would like this to be the same colour as the bottom half of the front render. So we were forced to make a decision on the spot and since coming home and looking on h1 and seeing Zarli's house I am now worried the Hamersley is too baby blue, rather than a grey? We are having white and lustrous elm kitchen which is visible from and to the alfresco and I wanted to tie in these grey type tones to our outdoors if I could, but not sure now if Hamersley is the best to achieve this?

Other thing we were thinking was, should we change to a surfmist roof? Or would this be too light with the lighter render colour and our grange brick? As I also love the look of the pic below, but would like to do in grey tones...



Any suggestions or thoughts on suitable solver render colours and whether we should change to a surfmist roof would be much appreciated...boy this is hard - thanks!

I need time for this one; I’m not too familiar with all the solver colours so I have to look through my fandeck.

I’ll try and get to you tomorrow night.

Sorry.

Solver Hamersley is a nice colour! But I can see your concern with the Lustrous Elm.

Big disappointment looking through the Solver colours, they don’t have any true greys in their colours!

One colour that does go well with the Lustrous Elm is Solver Lundy Grey. Not really a grey, but a green/beige…..looking at the Lustrous Elm, it’s got a very slight greenish tint to it……but not that obvious.

The only problem is, Lundy Grey will not go with the rest of your selections as nice as the Hamersley does.

Now, have I managed to confuse you? I’m very sorry!!!

So in a nutshell, stick with Hamersley, you can always do a feature wall in the fresco space when you move in.

Ohhh and by the way….if you do see blue in the Hamersley, its NOT a baby blue, I think it’s a stunning colour!

Thanks Michelle.

I know, I cannot believe Solver do not seem to have any true greys either...ahhh decisions decisions....I went to Solver on the weekend and got some samples, the Hamersley is a great colour and I would actually quite love it on an internal wall, but still not sure on externals??? I actually got a sample pot of Dune too and painted it on the side of the house, as we are demolishing anyway and suprisingly it looks grey on our wall - funny, I always thought it was more of a brown/beige base. Anyway, I really like it on our wall and now seem to have flipped to Dune render, with Surfmist roof, gutters and garage door....perhaps another trip to Solver this weekend before we lock everything in...

Thanks so much again for all your help!

Hi tuberose,

Here are some upclose pics of our Solver Hammersley. I think the little sample cards as sooo different to what it comes up as. IMHO its way too light and wishy washy for what we wanted. But in saying that, you may like it. Thought I'd give you these pics to help you make up your mind