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| Exterior Colors for Homes |
 Designed by noted architect Joseph Jacobberger, this house, built in 1911, is now completely restored. The new colors by ART FIRST capture its historic nature while accomodating the taste of the new owners.
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It's time to paint your circa 1860 house again, and you're beginning to think about colors. Should you stick with the same old white house with black shutters, maybe jazz up the shutter color, or try to find out what shade the house was painted when it was built? Historically accurate does not have to mean dull, yet old homes sometimes seem destined to endure coat after coat of boring gray or white paint. Nowadays, homeowners have numerous options. They can choose vibrant paint colors that are faithful to both the time period of their house and to their taste. Some people think that in order to discover the true colors of an old house, all that's necessary is to scrape through the layers of paint. But getting to the bottom doesn't necessarily mean learning the truth. Paint is altered by exposure to the sun and suffers chemical reactions through the years, experts say. For example, linseed oil, a component that might be found in paint on old houses, tends to yellow with time, especially in areas that are not exposed to light." The original color is no longer there for the untrained eye," explains James Lee of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA). People who depend on scraping "are either matching to a muted or faded color." So, how do you discover the original color of your house? There are several options. One is to have your paint analyzed by a professional. This involves examining samples under a microscope. It's a procedure that can cost from $2,000 to $5,000 and may take four to six days. And, once you see the original color, there are no guarantees that you're going to like it. |
Another way to find a historically accurate color is to look through magazines such as "Victorian Homes" and through library books about period architecture. But some people don't have the time or patience to do their own research, in those cases, a professional color consultant can be helpful. Several paint companies now have historical color palettes, yet many of them do not provide enough information about their colors for those who want to be historically accurate. "Often they won't narrow it down to an historical period," says Mary McMurray of Art First Colors for Architecture in Portland, Oregon, which specializes in architectural color consulting . If a homeowner is overwhelmed by the choices, SPNEA's Mr. Lee recommends walking around the neighborhood and looking at what other homeowners have done. But just because every house on the block is painted white, your home doesn't have to be white, too. "If you don't like brown, and everyone is telling you your house should be painted brown, there are other options. Don't feel limited to one particular hue," Ms. McMurray advises. Whether you decide to choose your colors yourself, or hire a professional, use patience and common sense. Andy Valeriani of California Paints believes that hasty customers often make the most mistakes - for example, basing their decisions on a paint chip. "Customers think it looks great in the store, and when they get their house done, it doesn't. Test patches on your house." Because older homes may have been part of a number of periods of history, they don't necessarily have to be painted their original color. If you own a Greek Revival house and don't like the typical color schemes from that era, you can always paint it the way it might have appeared in 1880. However, there is one truth that applies to a house, whether it is Victorian or Colonial: Some things are not meant to be. There is a fine line between the bold and the grotesque. "If you get 20 gallons of bright pink, it won't look good. Bad taste is just bad taste," McMurray says flatly. www.csmonitor.com |
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OREGON HOME MAGAZINE
MORPHING FOR MODERN LIVING If you were to dream up the perfect couple to caretake an historic architect-designed house on a leafy double lot in Portland’s coveted Irvington neighborhood and to usher it into the next century as a better version of its 1910 self, you’d come up with the discerning duo Donna Wax and Jeff Jones. Wax is a Columbia University-educated architect who relocated to Portland after spending 12 years in New York City. Jones is a former builder who was wielding a hammer on houses when he was still in high school in Michigan. After studying landscape architecture in college, he’s started businesses that range from building custom homes to putting in landscapes to medical staffing. The two met in Portland through a neighbor when Jones, who had his construction business, hired Wax as a consulting architect. “Some designers and architects I’ve worked with come up with something that isn’t quite right for you project and then keep trying to sell you it, which I find annoying,” he says. “I liked that Donna could come up with several different design schemes to solve a problem and that it was easy for her to refine a new idea until I was aide to say, “Oh, that will work.” Plus, her architectural bias is New Yorkish: She designs things small and is always thinking, You don’t need this, or, You don’t need that.” Ten years ago, the couple, who’d since married, and were living with their oldest son, Atticus, and their newborn, Finnegan, in a bungalow off a busy, traffic-snarled street, knew they needed more room for their family. They were lucky to find a house that had a yard, was close to a park, and fulfilled their requirements for urban living, namely, having stores they could walk to, having public transportation nearby and living in a diverse community. They also wanted a house that wasn’t renovated, knowing they didn’t want a ‘typical’ Craftsman remodel. The rest, as they say, is history.
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Or the start of the Wax-Jones chapter of a house history that began with Judge Wade Pipes, the father of noted English Cottage architect Wade Pipes, commissioning a new Arts and Crafts home from the celebrated Portland architecture firm of Kable and Kable. Officially known as the Pipes Family House, the 4,300-square-foot structure was being built while Wade was studying architecture in Europe. Upon his return in 1911, he designed a south-facing library addition, where he dreamed up and blueprinted many of the stately homes that grace the West Hills in Portland. Despite its pedigree, the house’s appeal to the couple wasn’t its history. “The history of the house had nothing to do with our buying The summer of 2000 found the couple working on the house so that the family could move in by November. “The house needed a lot of work,”says Wax. “The retaining wall around the property was falling down, which gave the house the reputation of being a haunted house. The house had been through a couple of renovations, but it really needed to be taken to the next level, just as we will probably leave some things undone for the new owners to tackle.” First they finished off the attic into a spacious playroom for the boys. By renewing all of the old fir tongue-and-groove walls, ceilings and floors, it feels more like the interior of an old boat than an attic. “All the plaster walls in the house were cracking and were rough-textured, so we smooth-walled them,” says Wax. “I’m a modernist living in a Craftsman home, so we got rid of things like lace curtains and the wallpaper in the dining room. A lot of the house was yellow, so we painted the interior walls in new colors and hired color consultant Mary McMurray of Art First to help us tweak the exterior color scheme.”
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PROBLEM: Mint green on Jack and Marion Newlevant's
1909 house felt like a shoe on the wrong foot. Designed for ranch-style
houses and modular buildings of a later era, the color didn't
bring out the architectural details of their Southeast Portland
home. The couple struggled
to find suitable colors. "We just didn't know where to start,"
Jack Newlevant says. SOLUTION: Hire a color consultant. Mary McMurray of Art First Colors for Architecture helped the Newlevants define a palette of historically accurate colors for their home. Like any good color consultant, she is trained to see and judge the subtle differences in colors and know how they will react in different light and with other colors. HOW SHE DID IT: McMurray took the pressure off by breaking down color choices. She prefers that houses have at least three colors: one for the body, another for trim and a third for architectural accents. Medium to dark shades on the body of a house make it more noticeable, she says. Complementary trim and accent colors can define architectural features and make them pop out, or in the case of undesirable elements, recede |
I T'S ELEMENTARY: To narrow the choices, McMurray also considers roof color and the paint on neighbors' houses as well as overall landscaping. "The closer the element is to the house, the more important it becomes. In this case, the roof (newer green asphalt shingles) was most important. "The wrong paint with that roof would be like wearing an outfit with a mismatched hat", McMurray says. STYLE POINTS: Another consideration is architectural style. She had some latitude with the Newlevants' predominantly Craftsman-style house because of its colonial-revival elements, such as round porch columns and square corner pilasters. PUT IT ON PAPER: McMurray sketched the Newlevants' home prior to painting, shading it to show how the new colors would look. The home owners settled on a rich gray green more appropriate for the 1909 house than its minty predecessor. A copy of the final sketch also went to the painter. AND THE WINNER IS: The home's new gray-green body, off-white trim and tan and blue-green accents made the awkward mint shade into a memory. Y ou can reach Lori Mendoza of The Oregonian by e-mail at mendozalori@hotmail.com |
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By TRICIA JONES, Think of your house as the most expensive and attractive garment you've ever worn. Just as tuxedos and gowns are tailored to the wearer, so should a home suit its owner, according to architectural colorist Mary McMurray."Not only do some colors suit some people very well and not appeal to others, but some colors you apply to one house and that look wonderful will look bad on another," said McMurray, who consults on designs for residential and commercial buildings. Style of house, surrounding landscape and the direction from
which the sun hits the building are a few of the considerations
McMurray talks over with clients. "People who aren't trained
have a hard time visualizing color on a large expanse,"
McMurray said. "For me, the most interesting and challenging
work is to try to create something that will suit them." While consultant McMurray believes in individual expression, she also says homeowners have a little responsibility to their neighbors. Paint store owners and managers will sometimes offer advice
on color selections they think a customer may regret.
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________________ "Exploring house
color options can be an adventure. But there's a line over which
bold crosses into garish." "Generally we try to detour them if they come up with a real bright pink or yellow or fluorescent looking colors, or maybe have them try a quart first before everything's mixed," said Don Bauman, manager of Cascade Paint & Supply in Vancouver. "Colors will be very different outside in the light compared to what you're looking at in the store." Like Bauman, Barry Fraser of Vancouver Paint & Supply said when shoppers look at deep colors, he recommends taking a sample quart rather than making a decision based on astore paint chip.Even so, depending on sun exposure and similar factors, Fraser said unusual color choices can be a good way for homeowners to venture out, make a statement and feel good about themselves. "There's no middle ground where you can just live with it, like the neutral colors," he said. "You're either going to love these deeper colors or hate them." Sometimes the negative reaction comes from the neighbors rather than the homeowners. One Vancouver family met resistance several years ago after painting its house black with red trim. The woman living there declined to be interviewed, but she said protest died down once it became apparent there were no city ordinances that could force her to change the house's color. ________________ "It's kind of like going to a scary movie," McMurray said. "Some are called thrillers and some are called horror movies."_________________
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after: lacework moldings form a delightful
decoration, their shapes emphasized with the selection of delicate
colors.
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© Mary McMurray. All Rights Reserved. |
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after: this residence was dramatically improved
by subtle changes: the location and shape of the attic vent,
and the color make-over.
A memory of the minty house before 
before
above: the formerly unhappy house colors
