Here’s how we arrived at choosing terra-cotta and natural stone for the exterior of this house. The client was building a new house from scratch. She wanted help in choosing colors for every part of the exterior from paving stones to roof. She knew she didn’t want the usual taupe or gray house that is so common today. We picked the siding first. She showed me two variations of terra-cotta that she was thinking about. In my opinion one was too yellow-orange, the other a strong deep rich color that we chose. Once we had this color we could continue with the other elements.
We picked a pure white for all the trim around the house including windows and garage doors. This would be a great contrast too the rich terra-cotta color. The small roof line above the front door and first floor would be copper. This material oxidizes beautifully to a rich brown that complimented the other colors and added a lovely patina to the color scheme.
Terra-Cotta, Stone, and White House
The actual roof would be black. We didn’t want to introduce another color that would fight with the motif we had chosen so far. We wanted the beauty of the color to be prominent.
The next big decision was to choose the stone that would be a large part of the first floor, chimney, and rear of the house. We wanted to pick a stone with multi-colors that had a touch of terra-cotta as well as other rich shades of natural stone. We looked for stones that would be varied in size so that the overall effect would be a rich texture of color, size, shape, and form. This was a crucial part of this whole project and the mason was an expert in laying the stone.
The Right Red for Exterior
The front door would be wood and we chose a deep walnut finish to compliment all the other colors. Here’s a view of the rear of the house.
Dark Wood Front Door
Lastly, we chose paving stones for the driveway and patio floors. Again we wanted to compliment the colors of the house. We brought several samples to the house and finally chose a multi-color paver that had hints of the terra-cotta and went well with the natural stone.
This house is an eye stopper. It has warmth, depth, character, and stands out as being special and different.
