Choosing Colours for Your Home Exterior

Choose the wrong colour and it will become the most blatantly noticeable thing about your home. However, the right colour will make your home look its best and bring a smile to your face every time you pull into the driveway.

Take in the Surroundings

Both the surrounding landscape and neighbouring buildings should be taken into consideration when choosing paint colours for your home’s exterior. If you want your home to stand out, do so in a tasteful and subtle way as clashing colours and styles will detract from the beauty of your property and even its value. The colours in your garden are also important. For example, if your house is closely surrouned by lots of greenery, green paint shades may be a poor choice

Remember, Some Colours Can’t Change

Bear in mind the colour of any building features which you won’t be changing, like the roof slates and window frames.

Explore for Inspiration

One of the best ways to discover the colour schemes that appeal to you, is to go for a walk, cycle or drive around the neighbourhood and look at the houses. Get someone else to drive you so you can take your eyes off the road. You’ll soon understand what you like and unlike, and what works best for your style of home.

Use an Accent Colour

Painting your walls, windowsills, soffit and fascia all the one colour is a bit boring. It doesn’t cost much to introduce an accent colour for building features, which complements your main wall colour. Do be aware however that a strong accent colour will draw the eye, so you won’t want to highlight any ugly features like gutters in this way.

Colour Trends

Trends for exterior paint colours are subtle and slow to change. If you think back to a decade or two ago, a bright array of yellow shades adorned most houses in Ireland. Now, as with interior colour trends, grey and neutral tones are more popular. You certainly don’t need to follow the trends, but they can be an interesting way to get inspired.

Properly Use Paint Samples

When you have an idea of some colours you like, get some samples and paint a small patch on each of the walls which face in different directions; then check back at different times of the day to see how they look



The ‘kerb appeal’ of your home is a big factor in its value, which is just another reason to spend some time choosing the right colours to paint it with. For further advice, please visit Willoughbys Topline, Monasterevin.