going dark

I’m going dark…with a house color that is.  It’s no secret that I love white.  My Santa Barbara home is white inside and out.  But white just won’t cut it here in Big Sur…at least not for the outside of a house.  It’s all about the majestic setting and blending in.

When we bought the house back in March it was painted a brown, which had faded noticeably on the South side of the house. The trim was an off white and didn’t fit my idea of fading into the beautiful Big Sur scenery.

I made the decision to go dark with both the body and the trim.  I didn’t want black or even a steel charcoal gray.  I wanted a warm taupey dark gray brown!  How difficult could that be?

Pretty difficult. Because of the damaging sun rays on the South side of the home, and the fact that the leaky windows had to be replaced on that side of the house, we made the decision to replace the windows with aluminum clad in a dark bronze color.

We also replaced the painted redwood siding with new wide redwood planks milled right here in Big Sur.  The siding will eventually weather to a warm, silvery gray like this redwood piece.

I consider myself pretty good with colors but this one threw me for a loop.  My husband joked that with all of my sample painting on the house, I could have probably just painted it myself!  Dark colors are tricky especially in the bright California sun.  I would like a color until the light changed, or I would like it on one side of the house but not the other.  There were quite a few misses!

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After trying color after color, and even conducting an Instagram poll, the winner was Benajmin Moore’s Midnight Summer in low lustre finish. The color changes in the different light and shadows, but I love all of it’s different shades!

Dark paint colors were a bit of a new territory for me. But stepping out of your comfort zone can pay off and I’m very happy with the decision. Stay tuned to see what we do next with this little slice of Big Sur.