Color Trends 2012: Blue is Beautiful
I've been putting together some advice on how to use the 2012/2013 color trends for home exteriors for my presentation at the International Builders' Show. Today, I'm going to share a few tips on how to the nature-inspired blues on your home's exterior.
Our focus on clean water as an element essential to life keeps blue flowing into the trend palette for another year. The blue trend is also being inspired by our love of denim. From the darkest indigo to the lightest faded blue, denim speaks to our need for both fashion and function.
If you love the color blue you might consider it for your siding color. Blue can work for most styles of home when it is very toned down or grayed. Truer blues usually look best on colonial, cape cod or bungalow style homes.
This home has James Hardie Boothbay Blue siding, which would work well with our synthetic cedar shake roofing tiles in any one of the grays offered.
But the beauty of blue is that it can also work well with warmer colors. Blue compliments colors with orange or yellowish undertones making it a perfect companion color for most natural wood tones. Below you can see how well blue works with either DaVinci Weathered Gray tiles or the Autumn standard blend multi-width shakes.
Keeping with this same line of thinking, you can see how blue would be a perfect accent color for so many schemes. In fact, if your color scheme is mainly warm you can use blue for the shutters to achieve a balance between warm and cool colors or on the front door to create an eye-catching focal point.
A blue front door compliments the yellow-orange undertones of the stained cedar siding on this home in Provincetown, MA.
I hope that gives you some ideas for using blue. Please stop back to learn about how some of the other colors that will be on trend for 2012/2013 and beyond can be used on home exteriors and which will work well with your synthetic shake or slate roofing system. Stay tuned for:
- Color Trends 2012/2013: Green's A Natural on 1/11/12
- Color Trends 2012/2013: Neutrals Get Colorful 1/25/12
Color Expert Kate Smith lends her expertise to DaVinci Roofscapes; a company that has manufactured award-winning synthetic slate and shake roofing since 1999. The polymer roofing tiles are virtually maintenance free and far more cost effective than the natural product. DaVinci leads the industry in tile thickness, the tile width variety and the greatest selection of subtle earth-toned colors. Company products have a 50-year warranty and are 100 percent recyclable.