Hi everyone. Jane-Eyles-Bennett here from Hotspace coming to you this Friday afternoon. Who is happy that it’s the weekend? Say hello, please. Love to know that you’re there and excited for the weekend!
So, today I want to talk about painting the exterior of your house. It’s a really good idea obviously to give your home a lovely makeover and a fresh new look, and I love painting houses. Not personally, but I love the effect that it gives. But I wanted to bring something to your attention about that.
And what that is is if you just paint your house with another colour, in a way, it’s like putting on a new cardigan but not adding some earrings or a new pair of pants. I can’t remember if I’ve used this analogy on here before so excuse me if I’m repeating myself.
So, if you think about that, you just change your top, but you don’t add any earrings. Or guys, you might have some nice cufflinks, or a watch or something like that with which you can update your outfit. Girls, with your handbag or rings or bracelet or shoes. Then, you’re really just putting a new cardigan on your house.
So, my suggestion with that is to yes, think about the colour – the colour is really important – but what other things can you do to transform your home with more than just colour? For instance, what can you do to the fence? What can you do to the trims? Can you add some sort of entry feature? Can you do something with the driveway? Can you do something with the outdoor living spaces? I’m sort of talking about exteriors now. Interiors certainly apply too. I find myself talking a lot about exteriors because I’m doing a lot of them lately.
So, anyway, I just want to talk about the cardigan syndrome, something more about that. The colour that you’re doing is important, but its only 50% of the equation. The rest of it is going to be about what accents can you use? What lighting can you use?
I was at a client’s the other day, and something that I worked out when I was on site was that the way that the landscaping was made, it look quite narrow. So, there was hedging which separated the driveway from the front yard on the right-hand side. So the hedging, what that did, it sort of split the two areas in half. What that visually did was to split the property in half, as well as some fencing and some landscaping sort of creeping in that was giving it the illusion that it was smaller than it was.
So, think about those things. Do you need to give the illusion that your house is wider, that your property is wider? Don’t worry too much about is it a light colour is it a dark colour? Is my house going to look small or light? That kind of factor doesn’t really apply on the exterior. I mean, it sort of does to a certain degree but I never really think about that. I think about what is the right colour for this property. And why? There’s always a justification about why.
So yeah, think about that. Have a good weekend, and I’ll see you next week.
Say hi and message me if you need any help with renovating your house. I do interior design and exterior design. Or, as someone said to me on the phone the other day, “Do you do interior design for exteriors?” And I said yes!