Color Contouring: The Hot New Painting and Remodeling Strategy for Enhancing Exterior Curb Appeal
The little house on Robin Road was what one keenly perceptive open-house visitor called “an architectural disaster”. The bathrooms were small, the eaves of the Cape Cod sloped so steeply that both upstairs bedrooms felt cramped – and worse yet, the house had barely any closets. There was also some ambiguity about which was the front door; one opened to the side of the house, up an awkwardly steep staircase and walkway, while the other required opening the gate at the top of the driveway and walking across the deck. Yet the home sold, at the end of a tight bidding war, for $50,000 more than it was listed.
The real estate team who sold the house was a dynamic pair who specialized in creative, aggressive ‘staging’. ‘Staging’ means the setting up of a house for pre-sale display. This real estate team showed up at the little Cape Cod the week before it went on the market armed with several thousand dollars worth of landscaping and painting supplies, and the delighted homeowners watched as that initial several thousand returned them fifty upon the final sale.
Why were they so effective? Because they focused on curb appeal. By repainting and landscaping the home’s exterior, they made the little Cape Cod look positively enchanting when viewed from the road. The blooming azaleas and cherry trees went a long way, but the bulk of the burden of the home’s curb appeal was carried by the paint job.
Repainting an exterior is the surest way to achieve curb appeal. A new paint job makes a surface look exceptionally clean, lending the impression that the building is sturdy and well-kept. Also, the newly perfected technique of color contouring can contribute to making a home look bigger, more harmonious, and better constructed; three of the most important characteristics determining curb appeal.
Color contouring is based on the simple optical principle that light-colored objects look bigger, lighter, and more in the background, while dark-colored objects look smaller, heavier, and pop out into the foreground. Using this simple rule, a clever designer can essentially reshape your house with a new paint job, playing up its strengths and minimizing its weaknesses to maximize your curb appeal. Follow the simple steps below for color contouring, and your house could gain as much as $50,000 in value from its curb appeal alone.
Color Contouring Tips:
1. Paint lower sections of your architecture darker than higher sections. Darker sections seem heavier, so it seems more stable to the eye to have them on the bottom, not vice-versa.
2. Paint spaces that you want to expand in slightly lighter colors than spaces that you want to shrink. If you have mismatched dormers, for example, painting the smaller one slightly lighter will help balance them visually
3. Pick a light shade for your main color. Light colors make surfaces look larger and more spacious, and in almost every case, the curb appeal is improved when a house looks larger.
4. Paint the structural details of your architecture (window trim, cornices, etc) in darker colors to make them stand out. Emphasizing structural features makes your house look more sturdy.
5. Paint your shutters in a lighter color. Lightly colored shutters will make your windows look bigger, which will increase curb appeal.