Jonatan Weissnat Jr.
Picking paint isn’t always easy, and boy did we have a hard time deciding on a beach house color. If you follow us on Instagram or Facebook, you probably saw us share a bunch of photoshopped options a few weeks ago that flashed by, slideshow-style, like this:
Podcast listeners were also the first to hear the conclusion of the debate this week in Episode #31, where we talked through a few of our initial instincts, how we changed our minds along the way, and what unexpected object finally inspired a firm choice.
So we photoshopped white trim into the picture above, and we fleetingly considered keeping the siding the same green-gray color.
And ultimately we decided that we wanted a clearer signal to the neighborhood that this house is coming back to life (as if the dumpster out front isn’t a clue) and a new exterior color felt like a great way to do that. Plus if you’re paying all this money to replace rotted siding and repaint everything, it’s part of the fun to get to choose a new color.
There are so many great options to choose from (light blue-gray, navy, cobalt, aqua, teal) that would make for a pretty inviting beach house. We’re one of four identical houses in a row on our block (same porch columns, same stained glass window up top, etc). We loved the idea of something minty or in the seafoam family, but every tester we tried just felt too close to blue (see the neighboring house colors peeking into frame above?).
Even if we chose something on the yellower side of the green spectrum – you know, more avocado – we didn’t feel like it would bring enough contrast to the blueness on the street. Now I realize it sounds weird to say a “rainbow feel” and then talk about painting ours a neutral color. We spotted quite a few light tan and gray houses around town that look great, so we didn’t want to rule it out.
Man, if you thought Sherry’s Pinterest board had a lot of gray or tan beach houses, don’t even get me started on the whites. And after spotting some around Cape Charles too – including an immaculate bed & breakfast that is crazy charming – we were starting to seriously consider white.
With a dark roof and a hit of tin (our beach house’s front porch has a tin roof) along with little hits of color (like a porch swing, planters, some colorful adirondak chairs, etc) we were definitely warming up to the idea.
On the latter front, we asked one of our friends about the white HardiePlank siding she put on her house a few years ago (which you’ve seen here on Instagram).
Plus, we realized a lot of our pins – and even the local B&B – are often surrounded by beautiful, lush greenery that provides a colorful backdrop for the white to pop against. The nail in the coffin for white was that the cool ornate columns we have on our porch sort of get lost in the white-on-white look, and it feels sad to make all that architectural detail blend into the background.
They’re more expensive than just the plain primed HardiePlank (which you then have to pay to get painted), so cost-wise it would be about the same, but we thought looking at their stock colors might help us narrow down our choices. To better visualize the stock colors, we drove around some new construction neighborhoods near us to hunt down full houses sided with it (holding up our samples to make sure we were judging a true match).
They were all nice, but a bit more muted than we could get away with in a fun little beach town (they’re probably best suited for the suburban neighborhoods they’re most typically used in). It certainly stands out as one of the more “fun” choices in the slideshow when you see them all flashing by, but a pink or coral color is a pretty far cry from the calm, classic blues and neutrals we’re used to decorating with. But around the same time we decided to just order primed boards that we could paint any color we wanted, we happened to lay our eyes on this: It’s from a boutique hotel here in Richmond called Quirk, where my youngest sister stayed for one night over the holidays with her husband (to escape everyone with screaming kids!
Sherry spotted it and immediately said to me “beach house paint color?” with a gleam in her eye. So less than a week later we were excitedly painting cup-matching swatches on the house and stepping back and feeling something we hadn’t felt before.
Instead of “nope, keep trying” it was more like “yes, yes, yes!” – and when a few neighbors stopped by to stand back and stare at our 20+ swatches on the house (this isn’t an exaggeration) it was unanimous.
