Picking the right colour for your roof can be a challenge
The roof is one of the biggest fixed elements of your home and even for the experienced home builder or renovator, it can certainly be a challenge coming to a decision on its colour. Make sure that you really do love the colour you choose, as it is generally going to be with the house for a very long time.
Tips
- Before you start looking at colours, consider your budget and rule out any paint colours or roofing materials that are out of your budget range.
- Go for a drive around your neighbourhood and look at your neighbour’s roofs to help you figure out what you do and don’t like.
- If you have chosen a couple of colours, ask your roofer or roof painter to provide you some addresses of houses he or she have painted in those colours. This way you can see what the colour looks like once applied and in different lights.
- If you have decided on a couple of colours. Go to Bunnings or Mitre10 and get a 1.5m by 1.5m piece of cheap wood (or if you’re building a house, see if you builder has some spare lying around) and paint each side with the potential colours. Now go and put it up next to the exterior wall colour and see how they look together.
- There are some great apps on the market to help to take some of the guess work out of choosing a colour. Resene’s EzyPaint virtual software allows you to “see the finish before you start”. Its compatible with PC and Mac and is easy to use, even for those that are so technologically savvy. The software allows you to load am image of your house, path and then paint it. You can try different colour schemes and decided if colours looks right together and has 600 colour schemes within the software, so even if you are not super confident on matching colours this wonderful piece of software can help you.
Remember
- If you have a brick house, then the colour of these bricks is not going to change. Make sure you the colour you choose doesn’t clash with the bricks. Look very closely at the colour of your bricks. Identify the main colour first and then try find hints of other colours that you could use as your roof colour. Just a small hint of a colour from your bricks can tie the two nicely together.
- Don’t try and match the colour of the roof and walls perfectly. You will wind up with a combo that is boring and monotone. Try and complement your colours instead.
- If the exterior wall colour or material is busy, such as multi-coloured bricks or stone, then choose a block colour and something that in a bit more toned down. Too many patterns or colours will just leave your poor neighbours eyes overwhelmed.
- If you are painting both your exterior walls and your roof, then choose your roof colour first. There is always a bigger selection of wall colours the roof colours. Once you have got the roof colour sorted, then you can find the perfect wall colour.
- Consider the style of your home and what colours suit its style. If you have a Spanish style house, then it is unlikely that a bright blue room is going to a good match.
- Gutters and downpipes are almost always never a stylistic feature of the house, most people will agree that matching gutter and roof colours is the best approach. The fascias on the other hand could do with a contrasting colour and white is almost always a safe option.
Good luck!
