The color is really incidental. It should be dictated by what pleases you and modulated by its context, ie the next door neighbors. The key to developing a good color scheme is to first find the major design components of the house and their relationships to each other. The next is to figure out color placement in terms of value (the light to dark scale of color) Once you know how the color values work together you can punch in the same value in whatever hues you are contemplating. The house sits up high so you want to act to bring it down and ground it. Start with the first floor and the siding below the porch. Make these the darkest value so the house has come weight. The next section is the second story and the gable. I would use a color a couple of value steps lighter than the base color for this. If you change hues make sure the two colors blend. The next element is the porch and second floor balcony. Make the basic element of these items a light trim color: the posts, window/door trim, ceilings, railings etc. Paint the shake balcony element in the same color as the shake on the gable. You do not want it to jump out. It will naturally project but it is not an element that wants to make a major statement. You should paint the eaves (soffits and rafter tails) in a light color so they will shadow and get noticed but you don't want to draw attention to them by highlighting them in a color. Lastly to create a visual stop as your eye naturally goes up to the top of the house, paint the fascia of the roofline a dark Punch color. This will bring your eye back down to the interesting parts of the house. It would also be a good idea to uses a mid tone punch color for the knee braces and porch braces. You can see from these porch braces how using to dark a color makes them feel like they are stuck on the porch posts and could just be popped off. Visually these are essentially structural elements although they aren't actually and they should feel like they are part of the whole- so they want just a small degree of differentiation. The same is true for the knee braces. Next: Color! This is up to you. You could make this a painted lady with strong colors or a quiet craftsman with monochromatic colors- or anything in between. It all depends on how you want you house to look and feel. Remember if you house jumps off the block it doesn't make you home look any better or your neighbors either and it also impacts your house's value as well. "Be outstanding with out standing out."

I think the colour of the siding right now compliments the tones on the ground floor of your house. With the proportions of your house being top-heavy with siding, you definitely don't want to choose anything darker than the ground floor material (is it stone?) or it will look like it's crushing the lower part. Keeping it light and neutral will mean it takes less attention away from the front entrance. Definitely new windows will help. The roof should have some more colour too--maybe a charcoal grey for the shingles? Because of the light shining on your house and the photography and then the uploading to the internet and then display on my monitor, I cannot be sure enough of the exact tones to tell you a specific colour. You can paint samples on large pieces of board and hold them up near your house and photograph the house from across the road again. Or you could get a local colour expert to come by and choose a colour for you on-site. Because there's such a large area of paint and because the colour can make or break the appearance of your house, I would strongly urge you to do the latter. I wish I was in your neighbourhood and could help you more. You're not in the Toronto area are you? :) Best of luck to you with your project. Cynthia

Also, just looking at the pictures again, it appears that there is a section on the recessed part of the porch that is siding- and very dark! I would also paint it out, probably the same medium tone as the garage door, trimmed in white, along with the front door. I think that lightening it up and painting the front door a bright colour would really go a long way to making the porch more bright and inviting! Good luck :)

I'd like white.