Dynamic Duo: How to Pull Off a Two-Tone Exterior Color Scheme

It would have been nice to find this article when I was choosing exterior window colors for our 2-tone house. (Some of you may have seen this in the discussions forum a few months back.) The house had been designed with different siding on the upper and lower levels, so I wanted different earth-tone colors as well and chose orange for the upper level (essentially the gables) and brown for the lower, with green roof shingles. From my days and days of online research on how to select window colors my takeaway was that one should either a) match the window trim to the sashes or b) match the trim to the siding. I've never had a house with window trim, so when I selected colors I thought I was following the rules - orange trim on the upper level and brown on the lower level, to match the siding on each! Two problems I discovered in retrospect were: a) Nobody discussed two-tone houses, so nobody discussed whether all of the trim should match on a two-tone house, and b) Nobody else seemed to have windows with separate frames and trim but treated them all as one piece of "trim".

So...as our windows were to be exterior-clad wood it followed that the frames (the boxes that the sashes rest in) should match the trim; therefore I chose orange (technically "terra cotta" as this was the only orange shade offered) aluminum frames for the upper window cladding and brown for the lower, with all of the sashes being green to tie in the roof color. But when the time came to select specific paint colors the experts told me I needed to paint all of the trim green to tie everything together. I decided to follow their advice but I'm concerned now that my house will look like a circus tent with too many color transitions (green sashes, orange frames, green trim, orange siding) surrounding each window. I've been told it will all look fine and I'm going to give it a fair shake but if it looks ridiculous I'll be repainting the trim myself to go back to my original, two-level scheme with green only in the roof, rakes and sashes. Attached are pics of my original idea first and then a computer mock-up from our architect of the house with all-green trim, which looks nice but doesn't show the orange or brown outlines between the sashes and window trim (3rd photo, taken of an upper window while testing paint samples). The house will be isolated and back in the woods, not part of a housing development. Still, I will likely get some should-have's over this but some reassurance would be nice...

I think the painted mock-up looks great. A warm, deep orange as opposed to a "fruit" orange should eliminate the circus feel. For the record, it seems like most house match the trim to the siding. Good luck!

Can you tell me the paint colors on the house with green yellow and white? David Smalls designs.