Even with thousands of exterior paint colors available, many homeowners opt for a neutral as the main color for their home exterior. There are many reasons neutrals continue to be popular but let’s take a closer look at three of the best.

First, there are more neutrals available today than ever before, and we’re not just talking about your grandmother’s boring old beige. New neutrals include grays, tans and beiges with richness, depth, and complexity. We’re talking about neutrals with character!

Second, the growing popularity of mixing materials on a home’s exterior requires a color that can harmonize with many different textures, finishes, and colors. When you want to pull together your home’s exterior and present a polished effect, a neutral color is the perfect solution.

Last, when you realize your home is part of your natural surroundings, you’ll discover that a neutral color is one of the best ways to seamlessly integrate your home in its environment. Neutrals can invite you to beautifully blur the line between indoor and outdoor spaces.

But neutrals can be deceiving

If you found a home painted in a color you love and went to the store to look for a sample of the paint, I bet you’d be surprised at how dull it looks on the sample card. The full beauty of a neutral is rarely apparent on a small swatch of the color, especially under artificial lighting.

Neutrals need room to stretch out and breathe in order to show off their true beauty. That sample that looks dull in the paint store may be absolutely perfect when it comes to life on your home’s exterior.

In fact, the paint samples most people fall in love with are rarely the ones best suited to the exterior of a home. You may buy paint based on a sample and invest time and money in painting your home, only to find that the color you’ve chosen is too bright or too dark once you’ve spread it over one or two stories.

Colors like Dove’s Wing or August Moon might not jump off the paint chip rack, yet they may be perfect to enhance your cedar shake roofing or the stone around entrance. Brattle Spruce may not wow you on a 2″ square, but wait until its full beauty emerges when painted on a pair of shutters. Neutrals come to life on the exterior of your home, where they complete a harmonious vision.

The bottom line is that most of the time, the colors that will work best on a home exterior are not the ones that look the prettiest on swatches. The best color is far more likely to be one of the colors you passed over at first glance, thinking it was too dull.

Step back and give toned-down colors a second look. The perfect color for your home exterior may be hiding behind its flashier relatives.

Searching for more awesome exterior color combinations?

Need help with your colors? We offer interior and exterior color consultations from professionally trained color consultants. Additional information:  bit.ly/2uRusVZ

Since Frank and Elizabeth Hirshfield opened their first store in 1894, it has been our mission to do the best job possible meeting customer needs and solving customer problems. Hirshfield’s. People and products you can trust.

Guest post by color expert Kate Smith – Sensational Color