SETTING THE TONE : Strike a New Balance With Strokes of Paint in Fresh Color Schemes for the ‘90s

The pure sunlight of Southern California summer shows flaws as well as perfection, and it may well be telling you--if someone else in your house or the neighbors haven’t already--that it is time to paint.

If you are one of the tens of thousands of Orange County residents whose home was built in tract housing booms from the 1950s through the early 1980s, you might be wondering--as you mull over paint chips and the task ahead--how to update the look of your home to help it visually enter the 1990s.

It’s not that hard to do.

To make the best of it, the experts say, approach house painting as you would any involved task. Consider the situation; map out a plan, including colors; purchase the necessary materials; prepare the structures to be painted and then grab your brushes and rollers and get to work.

And even if you hire someone else to do it, remember, it is your house and you have to live with the result, so stay involved in the decision making.

Color consultant Miriam Tate, who makes her living designing color schemes for some of the West’s largest new home builders, says lack of planning can ruin a paint job before the first patch of pigment is applied. The paint scheme itself might have been carefully worked out, but usually only in the context of what it looks like on the house.

And that’s not enough.

“You have to inventory your entire canvas, and that canvas begins at the curb,” said Tate. “So walk across the street and study your house and yard from there. See how it fits into the neighborhood and onto the lot. You want to plan a color story, and to be successful that story has to start at the curb.”

She talks of paint schemes in terms of “stories” to be told through the colors. In a single-level ranch house, typical stories might be horizontal and rectangular: the white trim around windows repeated in the fascia panel along the roof line and the long lintel over the garage door. In a multilevel house, the stories might be vertical and triangular: the colors in porch columns and the frames of tall stacks of windows repeated up high on the facade on ornamental louvers or medallions affixed to the stucco.

In simpler terms, telling the proper story simply means balancing blocks of color and accent tones. If you paint the front window and door trim green on the left side of the house, don’t make things lopsided by painting the garage door on the right side white without any hint of the same green. If there is brick or wood trim on one side of the front of the house but not the other, create balance by painting it the same color as the rest of the siding or by painting something on the other side of the facade in shades that match the wood or brick tones.

Tate, who develops color stories for entire tracts of homes rather than for one house at a time, suggests dividing the property into its largest masses--usually the driveway, the stucco or siding on the house and garage, and the roof.

If the driveway is white concrete, a predominantly white color scheme could well be too monotone. To add necessary definition, Tate suggests bordering the driveway and front walk with materials that repeat the colors in the roof of the house--even using concrete stains to color the driveway itself. Sponge painting, the same technique used on walls, works well on driveways.

And if the roof is a wooden shake or split shingle, as so many in Southern California still are, the texture it provides is likely to be all you need; don’t overkill with more textures on the house itself in the form of heavy wooden or rough masonry trim.

“We pick out colors last” when doing a job for a builder, said Tate. “We study the architecture for a couple of weeks first to get to know what shapes and textures we must deal with.’

For owners of the bare bones 1950s-1970s tract houses that cover most of the flatlands of central and north Orange County, the architectural detailing that is so much a part of new home design often can be captured easily and inexpensively with a few pre-painting add-ons.

The “pop out” raised window borders and other dimensional features that builders paint with contrasting colors on new homes can be added to older homes.

They can be in the form of window boxes, wooden frames around aluminum windows, new wooden trim or fascia boards, architectural trellises that are made to be painted rather than covered by plants, even masonry or stone veneer applied judiciously. Tate’s especially fond of framed louvered vents. They come round, square, rectangular, even triangular, and while they don’t ventilate anything when added after the house is built, they provide relief that can carry one or two accent colors high up on the otherwise flat exterior walls of a house.

To help figure out how you want to paint your house (which comes before deciding the precise colors you want to use), Tate says it helps to realize that cool colors make houses seem bigger because they join the structure to the sky while warm colors make a house smaller by joining it to the earth.

At the same time, she suggests avoiding all of one or the other: an all cool scheme alienates the viewer while an all warm scheme can make people jittery.

“The trick is to decide what you want to predominate, and then to chose a number of colors that create a balance when applied to the house.

In older neighborhoods, Tate said, landscaping usually is quite developed and there are lots of large trees and shrubs that supply a lot of cool color--so make sure to balance them with warm tones on the house, preferably as the primary color, repeating the cool tones on the trim.

In new tracts, Tate uses color to create an environment where not much exists yet. So she balances the streetscapes with some of the homes done in predominantly warm colors while cool colors predominate in others.

Picking colors is a highly personal thing--that paint chip that whispers “beautiful buttery hue” to you might scream “ugly, jaundiced yellow!” to your next door neighbor.

But there are a few guidelines that can help most everyone make informed choices.

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Most important, of course, is balance--don’t use all cool or all warm colors. And do consider the colors on surfaces like the roof and the drive and walkways to be part of the overall scheme.

If you chose a relatively neutral color for the base color on your house, you can heat it up by having the paint store shade it with something from the warm side of the color wheel: the red-orange-yellow family. Conversely, the same neutral color can be cooled by shading it with blues, greens or purples. White is cool, brown is warm.

The same can of beige can be made warm by blending in undertones of red or yellow, and cool with undertones of blue or green.

If your house has a thick, heavy stucco with a rugged texture, it will make any color you pick look several shades darker.

And when picking colors, do not stand inside and and study the 1-by-2-inch samples, or chips, that most paint stores display. Ask for an architectural sample, typically a 3-by-5-inch chip, then take it outside at midday and look at it head on and, from the side, by holding it at arm’s length to the left or right of your torso at shoulder level and turning your head to view it. You will get a much better feel for what the color will look like on the exterior of your house.

Pick colors that have been toned down with grays or browns--”you want the edge taken off of them,” Tate said. For a house that really has personality, pick colors with multiple undertones--the color of the house will change as the quality of the light varies throughout the day.

No matter what the exterior color scheme, the interior of a house can be lightened significantly by painting the eaves a bright, clear white that will reflect light to the inside. Painting eaves and patio covers in dark colors that absorb light will make things much dimmer inside the house.

Don’t be afraid of using several colors--the typical tract house being built today has four to six colors: the base, the trim that frames windows and doors, an accent color or two on architectural details and the thin moldings or “stops” that often are part of window and garage door framing, and finally an over-painted area or two--bands of complementary or contrasting color painted directly over the base color on the stucco or siding.

When painting stucco, use a paint that is clearly labeled for masonry or stucco--it will soak in better and last longer than paints blended for wood siding.

When replacing older wooden tilt-up garage doors with metal sectional or roll-up doors, don’t confuse the primer with which they are coated at the factory with a final coat. It is primer, go ahead and paint it.

Garage doors look smaller when they are separated from the surface of the house by bands of color--one on the heavy framing and another on the quarter-inch stops that are applied around the inside of the frames.

Don’t paint exterior doors in dark colors if they are exposed to the sun--the heat will bake the paint and cause the doors to warp. And never paint one side of an exterior door and stain the other--each finish has its own heat and moisture retention characteristics, and they aren’t compatible. The result will be a warped, sticking door.

As a general rule, accent and trim colors animate a feature, so don’t use them on things that ought to stay in the background--rain gutters, gas meters, the metal covers for telephone and electrical equipment boxes should be painted the same color as the part of the house they’re attached to. They don’t deserve to be picked out for special attention.

Finally, Tate said, treat the whole house, including the garage, with the same attention to detail the area around the entry gets. Don’t add architectural or painted embellishments to the ground floor and forget the second story; if you add shutters to the ground floor living room windows out front, put them on the upstairs bedroom windows as well.

Remember in all your decisions, balance is key.

1990s: Color scheme uses a shadow-gray base paint combined with bright white trim and terra-cotta accents in the shutters, entry door and stop strip around the garage doors.

The strip of windows in the roll-up garage doors helps minimize their mass and accent color on the stop surrounding the doors makes them look smaller while carrying color scheme into that area. Stacked living room window treatment gives the left side of the facade a warmer, open look and visually reduces height of the wall.

1960’s: Mustard-and-brown color scheme was common. Dark brown garage doors and trim absorb light and become the most dominant feature of the house--a look that helped give rise to the criticism that Southern California is the home of the $200,000 garage door. The windows, framed in a dark color, seem small and unwelcoming. The absence of any accent colors or architectural relief makes the face of the structure appear towering and blank.

1970’s-80’s: The same house in white with forest green trim and stained wood doors. Painting the garage door moldings the same green as the window and door moldings, facia boards and chimney cap unites the color scheme and balances the facade, but the lack of accent pieces such as shutters and window boxes leaves the house looking plain. The white, while a good choice for many homes, tends to make structures look larger and spaces empty.