Red House Color Reveal + How To Choose the Right Color for Your Home

Choosing an exterior paint (or siding) color for your home can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be! We’re sharing our best tips on how to feel confident and what to look for when choosing an exterior paint color.

Our Exterior Starting Point

Our Michigan Red House project has been a two year labor of love and we’re nowhere near close to finishing it. BUT! We’ve made huge amounts of progress on the interior, the exterior and even a few projects that kind of qualify as both.

A lot has changed out front since we took the keys on moving day! The roof has been completely replaced and we’ve added gutters where there were only intermittent sections. We’ve also added an efficient new front door and moved an original window from the back of the house to the front of the house.

Eventually, all of these changes established a baseline that set us up for the final prep before painting. But before we could paint there were rotten corner moldings to replace, woodpecker-damaged cedar shakes to swap out and lots and lots of loose paint chunks to pressure wash and scrape.

But once this was all done, how did we land on our final color? There were lots of considerations and we’ve got some tips!

1| Consider the Home’s Surroundings

This is arguably the most important step in the color selection process. Regardless of where you live, there are things beside the main color of your home that will influence your decision. For example, your existing roof, gutters, soffits and even landscaping can all influence color selection if they also won’t be changed.

Also up for consideration is how close your home’s structure is to any neighboring structures. In this case, the red house property is directly adjacent to our tree house property, but the homes are far enough away from each other that it wasn’t a concern here. For example, though, when we chose the paint color for our two flat, we considered the color tone of the brick on the adjacent buildings since they’re incredibly close to each other. Every situation will be different, but certainly don’t pass over this important step.

2| Apply Samples Directly to the House

Once we’d narrowed things down to three top colors, we picked up samples from our local paint store and applied them with the cheapest disposable brushes we could find. In addition to applying the samples directly to the siding at the front of the house, we also applied the trio of possible colors to the soffits, trim and adjacent to the existing gutters. We repeated this process on several sides of the home and highly recommend it! The front of your home will receive different light than the back of your home, so you’ll need to consider (quite literally) all sides before landing on a color.

Remember, colors ‘dry down’ and will look much darker dry than they look right out of the can. Be sure to give them time to dry to allow for proper color representation. Also, be sure to apply two solid coats to for proper coverage.

One more quick tip – We always orient our samples in the same order across different sample placements so we never get confused, especially when the colors are so similar. For this trio, we laid them out in alphabetical order, From L to R are Carraige Red, Cottage Red and Palace Arms Red.

3| Understanding Paint Sheens

Much like interior paint, exterior paints are available in multiple sheens that determine the level of reflectivity. Indoors, we prefer a matte or eggshell finish on the walls for the best balance between low reflection and easy wipability. Outdoors, our thought process was nearly identical, but knowing that exterior surfaces face significantly more punishment from the elements, we wanted to retain some level of resistance to weather.

A flat paint finish will absorb more of the suns rays, and the higher you step up in gloss, the more reflective your home will be to the sun! That said, the higher the gloss, the more you’ll notice imperfections, too. Ideally, you’ll want a paint with a low sheen, that is not completely flat. Oddly enough, we had a hard time finding this finish in exterior paints with, say, Sherwin-Williams, which only offered flat or satin (going up to high gloss), but we really wanted an eggshell-esque finish.

This led us to Benjamin Moore, which had the most options in terms of exterior finishes! We went with Benjamin Moore’s top-of-the-line Aura exterior paint in Low Lustre finish, which is very similar to an interior eggshell finish. We figured that if splurging on the highest quality paint could buy us a few extra years before repainting again, it would be well worth the investment. In the grand scheme of things, the price difference is pretty insignificant.

Higher quality paints offer much better resistance to fading and chalking, which was a significant issue on the house’s old finish. This paint also offers a level of breathability that can help prevent chipping and bubbling, which will help it look better, longer. We’re really hoping that the right prep work and springing for the best quality paint will contribute to a finish that will look great for a decade!

The Winning Exterior Paint Color

Enough about all of the prep work and decision making, already! As many of you predicted and hoped we would, we went with the ‘middle’ sample color, Benjamin Moore’s Cottage Red. And it’s perfect if we do say so ourselves.

Kim was decisive from the start, claiming Cottage Red as the clear winner (almost instantly)! I, on the other hand, needed some convincing. Cottage Red has a slight blue undertone, allowing it to blend seamlessly with our purple-leaning gutters while pulling from the deeper tones in our roof. In the end, Carriage Red would have been a great choice as well, but Cottage Red was absolutely the correct decision. It’s been such a long time coming that we almost can’t believe that the exterior of this little structure finally has a new lease on life!

The house looks phenomenal already, but we can’t wait to see it with all of the trees in full bloom. The contrast of the red home against the green leaves is perfection!

What’s Next?

The house is painted, the slightly awkward concrete paths are demo’d, the significantly costly foundation repairs are completed and we’re ready to move on to the next phase of the front yard project. Later this summer, my dad and brother will be joining us in Michigan to build a low platform deck at the front of the house that will serve as an entryway and small seating area. Once complete, our landscaping team will install the planting bed borders and fill all of the newly outlined pathways with gravel.

It’s been a long road and we’ve still got a way to go, but this house is looking better by the minute and we can’t wait to spend some lazy summer days finally enjoying the outdoors at the Red House!

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Looking for more? Here is advice from a professional house painter, how to paint anything, a fun way to paint a pattern, and how to repair, prep, and paint a front door.