A painter’s discussion of the aesthetics of Washington, DC Rowhouses
You’ll see them in Adams Morgan. You’ll see them in Dupont Circle, Kalorama, Georgetown, and Mount Pleasant. You’ll see them around Capitol Hill. You’ll see them in all shapes, sizes, materials, and styles. Some of them are over a hundred years old, and most of them are worth more than a million dollars. We’re talking about Washington, DC row houses; they’re everywhere in the nation’s capitol, and painting them right is an important contribution to our city’s aesthetics.
The critical thing to keep in mind when decorating row house exteriors, is that you are both one with, and distinct from, your immediate neighbors. Unless your neighborhood has specific aesthetic restrictions, you have no limits on your own creativity – nor control over what your neighbors do. But the key to the aesthetic success of the entire neighborhood is for each homeowner to strike a perfect balance between self-expression and neighborhood harmony. Meaning, you want to blend in with the whole, but still manage to make a statement.
Below, we have depicted two recent Blue Door Painters success stories. Both are Washington, DC row houses; the first in <where>, and the second in <where>. Each one demonstrates the mistakes that can be made at each end of the originality/conformity spectrum – and provides hints for how to restore your row house to the perfect aesthetic balance with its neighborhood.
In the first case, we have a row house that suffered from too much neighborhood conformity: a total lack of distinction from its neighbors. Outside of certain planned and aesthetically controlled communities, row houses with identical decoration give a neighborhood a cold, neglected, almost institutional feel. Passers-by get the sense, without even knowing why, that residents don’t have the resources or motivation to give their homes an individual touch; this makes the neighborhood seem less affluent (ironic in an area where most of these homes sell for over a million dollars!). While gardening and hardscaping play a role in showing pride in your home and giving it a personal touch, choosing a unique color for your facade is the quickest, lowest maintenance, and most impactful method of establishing uniqueness.
In our first example, the homeowners first tried to establish identity by leaving the bricks identical to their neighbors but painting the door bright blue. While painting a front door blue can be a clever technique in certain situations, in this case it only served to draw attention to the drab uniformity of the plain brick construction. Dissatisfied, the homeowner needed a scheme that would harmonize with the simple elegance of the rest of the neighborhood, but still firmly distinguish it from the crowd.
Departing drastically from the natural brick, Blue Door Painters painted the facade a warm silvery gray, and trimmed the door and windows with a snowy white that provided subtle yet definite contrast to the architecture. Choosing a mahogany red for the front door pulled it back in from the former garish blue, and created harmony with the red bricks of the neighbors. The result is a distinct contrast from the rest of the row, but a cleverly maintained aesthetic harmony.
In the second case, we see an example of a homeowner who took the desire to be unique a little bit too far, and it disrupted neighborhood harmony. The row house in the center is painted a bright sky blue, a strong cool color that clashes with the pale but warm earthy tones of its neighbors. While some neighborhoods are characterized by a wide range of color, and can therefore support such a high degree of contrast, in this neighborhood (particularly with so little landscaping) the contrast was too harsh and the row house in the center clashed.
Blue Door Painters changed the color of the home’s facade from sky blue to a warm, but pale buttery yellow. The color still stood out from the neighbors, one of which was a more textured gray-gold, and the other of which was more tawny, but it kept the general color scheme intact. The choice of white for the window trim created further contrast with the neighbor on the right, whose house has a similar texture; their slightly darker trim set off the center house’s white trim quite nicely, without creating a clash.
So when you set out to decorate your row house, you need to consider what color scheme would create the perfect balance of uniqueness and conformity to maximize the beauty of your entire neighborhood. Feel free to take advantage of Blue Door Painters color wheel tips or our complimentary color consultation service if you want some free ideas!