My Cottage’s Exterior Makeover Reveal

An exterior home renovation or exterior cottage makeover can be costly, especially if you add an extension. It is less expensive if you need a new coat of paint, new shingles, a new deck and some new exterior features. It is what our cottage project required to rejuvenate it. Perhaps you need something similar to freshen up the exterior of your house. Since the outside of your home or cottage makes a considerable impact. Read on to find out how to make it a good one.

I thought I would reveal our Lake of Bays cottage renovation process to inspire you to makeover your exterior home or cottage. Our cottage needed an exterior paint job, but we put it off because the deck needed a makeover too. The priority at first was the deck because the boards were rotting and dangerous to walk on. Unfortunately, the second-floor skylight began to leak. The water made it to the kitchen breakfast area. So that trumped everything. The shingles needed replacement too. We fixed the skylight and replaced the shingles. There is future exterior work, such as an extension which we would like to do. But that will have to wait.

The Story Behind Our New Roof

Roofing is a critical feature of the exterior of your home or cottage. So picking the shingle’s colour is crucial. In the summer of 2021, we replaced the old shingles with dark gray ones called weathered wood. It works well with the colours of the tree trunk bark that you can see in the forest to the side of the cottage. The photo above shows you what I mean. And as you can see, these shingles coordinate with the gray flagstone path at the front of the lake house.

The photo below shows the cottage after the shingles were replaced and before it was painted. It replaced a brown roof and transformed the look.

The Story Behind Our Deck Railings

In the fall of 2021, we decided to renew our deck, which faces Lake of Bays. The deck boards were rotting, making it unsafe to walk. Before we got our roof done, we made a trip to Excel Railings in Bracebridge, Ontario, to pick the railing colour for our replacement deck. We chose a light-coloured warm beige aluminum railing colour called sand.

Interestingly, in the afternoon sun, this sand colour looks more like a warm white, which you can see in the photo below. Inside our cottage, it appears more like a warm beige. I will explain further on in this blog why this happens. After our deck replacement, we decided we needed to have the cottage repainted too. We were not sure we liked the orange stained board-on-board wood colour.

Tips for Deciding Upon Exterior Paint Colours

Since we did not like how our exterior paint colour looked with our new railings, we had to pick exterior paint colours next. Choosing paint colours can be daunting. So you may ask. What are the top priorities when selecting exterior paint colours for your home or cottage?

There are several factors to consider before deciding on new colours for the exterior of your home or cottage. One of these factors is that the exterior paint colour is more of a long-term commitment than indoor paint. For example, there is less paint required in a room than the amount needed for the exterior of your cottage. Therefore, the outside takes longer to paint and requires more paint colour than the one room of your house. As a result, exterior paint projects are costlier. So you want to make sure you will like it.

The factors and tips in this blog will ensure the process of picking your exterior paint colour goes smoothly for you. It did for us. Recently, we repainted our cottage exterior. So I will use our project as an example. More than a new colour, paint is our home’s protective barrier. So now I have both peace of mind along with the pretty. I like the idea of both. We waited too long. So part of it did have some wood rot along the deck, which needed repair. It was good we got it done when we did to protect it from decaying further.

Adding exterior paint is a cost-effective way to redo the home exterior. It is a preferred option for many homeowners that want a new look without the hefty price tag. Choosing a good exterior house colour and trim combination can change the look and add life to the cottage or home. However, even though a new coat of paint can go a long way, it can also be a dramatic change that’s hard to comprehend until the whole house is painted. Accordingly, it’s vital to carefully consider multiple options before making a final decision and changing the entire exterior of a home. One way to do this is to create mood boards.

Mood Boards

One factor to consider is other exterior colours close to the cottage. We already chose the shingles colours and railing colours. So I compared how they looked together. A mood board like this one can help you do this. You should examine the lasting elements— path flagstones, railing posts and roof shingles—before you pick exterior colours. Most of these features have undertones that might affect your palette. I considered a blue colour palette and a green colour scheme. My husband preferred the green one. So that is the one we chose.

Mood boards help you see how the colours work together. I took the mood board photo inside my office by my west-facing window. Since I took the picture in the morning, it was in the shade. The Carrington Beige looks darker and more sandy in the shade inside.

As you can see, it is almost the same colour as the Benjamin Moore paint chip Sag Harbour Gray. These colours have a green undertone. They look like a warm gray or a warm beige in this lighting. The colours would look like this in a west-facing room in the morning. The light or lack of it in a room affects the colour.

The same is true outdoors too. But the colours tend to look lighter outside. Like the cottage photos reveal, they look more like a gray and warm white outside.

Check the Roof

Your house is your canvas, but it is not blank. Some colours that are on your home’s exterior are already established. Our roof, for example, was just reshingled. We had the railing colour already picked out too. It was fortuitous that I still had the railing colour sample to compare to the shingle colour sample. When choosing exterior paint, start with what’s there already. House paint is simpler to change than a roof. Your exterior siding paint colour doesn’t need to match the rooftop, but it should harmonize. I chose to go with a lighter colour to contrast with the roofing. As the adage goes: it is all in the details.

The trim and siding colours chosen matched almost perfectly with the railings. It is more apparent during certain times of the day. Read on to find out what I mean.

Factor in the House’s Lighting

Look at your paint chips during the day, at night, when it is sunny, and when it’s cloudy. Paint colour is usually affected by the environment, shade, sun, and time of day. So take samples of the colour and see how it looks on different sides of your home or cottage. I did this before I chose the colours for our lake house.

The paint chips will look different inside your cottage under artificial light. And they will look different outside under the natural light of the sun. Furthermore, the colours will look different on your home’s exterior depending if it is south, west or east-facing.

Let’s look at the south side or forest side of our cottage….

Sunlight will drastically turn your exterior colour cool or bluish, which happens to a paint colour when daylight is abundant. A house with bright sun exposure will need to go at least 2 to 3 times warmer on the exterior colour to get to a balanced color so that the house doesn’t lean too cool or blue. This is especially true on the south-facing side and west facing-facing side of your home.

For example, some trees create dappled shade on the south side of our cottage. The image above shows how these beige and brown-gray colours look. The taupe Sag Harbour gray looks more like a light gray or white in the dappled sunny areas and a darker blue-gray in the shade. The photo shows that the sun does indeed turn exterior colours bluish. Since I wanted a white and gray lake house, I was happy!

In the sun, these colours look gray and white with no green undertone visible. If you recall, the taupe colours look beige and dark in my office by my west-facing window. The photo above shows how dramatically sunlight drains the colour of the paint. Outside, in natural sunlight, it looks different. The colour looks light gray and white instead of beige. Beige is the colour they look like on the mood board.

The south-facing side of our cottage looks gray and white. Direct south-facing light washes out or drains the green undertone. It is something to consider if you want the undertone to be visible on specific sides of your house, like the front or back.

Let’s look at the west-facing lake side of our cottage.

Paint colour can look different from one side of your home to the other based on the type and quality of light your house gets. They can look dramatically different in the shade or sun too!

For example, the colours look softer on the west side of our cottage than they did on the south side. The photo above shows how both colours look softer compared to how they look on the south-facing side of the building. Also, the colours look different in the shade compared to how they look in the direct sun.

The Sag Harbour Gray looked like the colour of our railings in the shade. The photo above shows what I mean. If you look closely at the railing post beside the cottage, it appears to be the exact colour of our siding!

If you look closely at this same photo, you will also see that the railing pickets in the direct sun look like the lighter door trim colour! The sun can wash out the colours, which in our case, helped the exterior paint colours coordinate well with our railings.

Let’s look at the east-facing, front of the cottage…..

A colour you LOVE on the back might not be your fave on the front, but SOMETIMES, something has to give. Sag hourbour gray has lots of movement. It looks like a different colour on the front of the cottage. It has a different colour on the deck in the back where our lake is. In our case, this situation made us both happy!I liked the gray and warm white that these colours appeared on the west side of the cottage. On the other hand, my husband wanted our cottage to have a green exterior.

As we drive up to our cottage we see its east-facing front. Since this side of the cottage is east facing, the sun shines on it in the morning. On the front of the cottage, it looked like a neutral gray when it received the morning sun. But in the afternoon it often picked up a different colour. During the afternoon when it receives no sun, it often looked more of a greenish gray. The photo above shows you what I mean. Since the west side of the cottage looks gray and white and the east facing side sometimes looks green both of us are happy!

Look at Your Homes Surroundings

The landscape around it also plays a part. That is because your home’s surroundings are blooming with colour ideas. You can use the colours of forests, plants and scenery to help determine if you want the exterior to blend or reflect the natural surroundings.

For example, the prevalence of trees that many cottages have around them may suggest an earthy palette of greens for the exterior. And a beach setting might propound using sandy colours such as sand or beige. For example, the exterior trim of our cottage appears to have a sandy hue during some periods of the day. So it echoes the small sandy beach we have by the lake. The lakeside beige deck railing and Carrington beige trim mirror the colours of the small sandy beach we have. And I love that both the deck railing and exterior trim colour of the cottage echo the colour of sandy beaches.

Meanwhile, my husband loves that our cottage has a forest surrounding it and wanted a green exterior painted lake house to reflect that. The Benjamin Moore Sag Harbour Gray is a warm gray with a green undertone. As a result, it seems to pick up that green undertone when surrounded by green grass and forest. You can see the effect in the photo above. My husband got his green cottage. So he is happy.

Since I am a home stager and decorator, I wanted something neutral but still cottage-like. I loved gray since it echoes the colour of the gray granite prevalent around the Lake of Bays. It is also similar to the colours in our granite flagstone path leading up to our cottage. The photo below shows you what I mean. Furthermore, I like warm whites and beiges since they are popular colours and mimic the sandy colour on our little beach. Carrington’s beige looks white, especially when the sun shines on it. But it is more of a light beige. So I did it! I found colours both of us prefer!

Architectural details

Another factor to consider when picking an exterior paint colour is if there are any architectural details, such as window frames and mullions. To emphasize architectural details, paint them with an accent colour that has an intentional relationship to the background colour of the home. For example, we painted our window frames, door frames, and window mullions lighter.

Painting these architectural features a different colour highlighted them and added decorative interest to our cottage exterior. It complimented the cottage. You can completely transform the outside of your home by painting your architectural details. It creates a uniquely distinctive look.

Conclusion

We waited a while to renovate our cottage exterior for several reasons. When we did, we had to choose new deck railings, shingles and exterior paint colours. If you have all the samples like we did, creating a mood board to compare how everything looks ensures the colours will work together. So the first tip for narrowing down the paint colour is to create a mood board. Secondly, it is critical to see how the colours will look with lasting elements such as the entranceway walkway.

The third tip is to place the paint chips against the exterior siding of your home to see if the colour is what you will be happy with throughout the day. Another point to remember is the colours will look lighter in the afternoon if that part of the house is west-facing. It will look light-coloured in the morning if it is east-facing. Therefore, see how the colour looks throughout the day too.

If you live in your backyard and what the exterior paint colour to look good there, then see how the colour will look during different times of the day in your backyard. On our cottage deck, this was important to me. So I was thrilled that it looked white and gray throughout the day.

So if your husband wants a green exterior paint colour to enjoy when he drives up to the cottage or house, and you prefer a gray and white exterior, Sag Harbour gray and Carrington beige may be colours that will make both of you happy. But this is true only if your front yard is east-facing. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me. Click the following link to find out how to contact me. https://lynteriors.wordpress.com/contact/