11 Aug Exterior Design
The exterior of the house sets the tone for the personality of the home and can act as a starting point for the interior design to build upon. It’s also really important to get the curb appeal right as it makes the house more marketable for resale, but it’s also something that you will see every day and so you need to be happy with it.
We pretty much had a blank slate to work with, but we knew we were going to keep the existing brickwork intact so the design would have to complement the existing floor and the orange brick.
Main Exterior Style
There are two types of styles that we both liked that can work well with brick, Craftsman and Tudor. Many of the homes along the Mississauga Rd. corridor built 50 years or more ago were built in the traditional Tudor style. There are so many beautiful older Tudors in the area that have stood the test of time, but there are not many newer homes with that style. On the other hand, there are also a lot of Craftsman-style homes, but they are nearly all less than 10 or 20 years old.
So as a bit of a nod to the history of the area, we thought it would be great to go with a slightly modern take on the Tudor. That would help the home to stand out, while making feel well connected to the area.
Craftsman
Tudor
Colour Tones
After a bit of back and forth with our designer, we were quite happy with the end result for the design. Traditionally, Tudor’s are a white stucco frames with dark beams and we thought we could modernize that a bit by going with either two greys or a solid colour all around.
We settled on a solid dark colour, “night grey”, that would be used for both the stucco and the boards. Dark window frames will maintain the single tone feel, which I hope gives the house a very warm, rich feeling. The old siding around the garage has brick behind it, so we’ll rip that off and keep the consistency at the bottom.
Honestly, I have no idea that this will work. After scouring the internet, I’ve only managed to find one place that has gone with a similar look, and it looks great. Our house has more siding than that one, so hopefully, the monotone isn’t too…monotonous. Only one way to find out!
The last thing on the list for the exterior is to figure out what to do with the front door. Our existing door is solid wood but it’s a little weathered. We could get a new one, but it feels like a shame to get rid of such a nice door. What we’re going to do is sand it down and put a coat of paint on it. A coloured door can act as a great focal point and compliment the home nicely. We still haven’t decided what colour will work with the dark grey siding and orange brick.
If you’d like to weigh in, we’d love your opinion. You can vote here and let us know what you think!
No Comments