The black accents seem right to me, too. What you also might do is to paint your light post there at the front walk in black, and do a small flower bed at the base of it.

My design:

The only reason I was steering away from black was strictly because of maintaining the paint on the wood shutters. Do you have any recommendations on maintaining wood shutters? I don't want to scrape and repaint my shutters every 2 years…I will do vinyl before I commit to that maintenance. Also, we will be adding white stone in the white areas around the front door. Since you suggested removing the shutters to the left of the front door, should we outline/accent that window in stone in order to set it off?

Great point, Lampert Dias Architects. Natural brick does always look great with black accents. However, we have to make a recommendation about the shutter sizing. The current shutters are not properly fitted for your windows because shutters should measure out to be half the size of the window they are on.

Since you plan on adding wooden shutters, please take a look around our website and request a free catalog. Below are some images of our shutters on brick homes. http://www.timberlane.com

Price check shutters. We did an addition to our house last year and I remember the shutters being very affordable. So if you want black with no maintenance, I would look into it :)

I think around $60 a pair? I think it may be worth the cost if it means you don't have to go through the sanding and painting process annually or biannually.