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It looks boring and depressing to me. Perhaps if it had more landscaping or shutters or something... I also think it would stand out too much on the street. Personally, I'd prefer my house to blend in, I wouldn't want my house being the one sticking out like a sore thumb. If anything is going to stand-out about my house, I'd prefer it to be a really gorgeous wooden door or a really beautiful yard or leaded windows. The color of your house should be the nice canvas, not the focal point, imo.
That just reminds me of an ex roommates aunt's house... she lives on a nice housing tract in the country. The homes are all newer, but made to look more..homey I suppose. Brick facades, stone walkways etc etc. She decides to paint her house BRIGHT LIME GREEN. It looks like she took the paint that contractors use to paint the ground and just sprayed her house with it. It looks absolutely ridiculous.
DITTO. Years ago when I worked in the building material trades a number of window and door manufacturers voided warranties if deep base colors were used. Why? They absorb more heat and UV, maybe?, and resulted in faster deterioration and many more problems. From personal experience, deep base exterior colors not only fade but generally deteriorate faster.
Jeldwen voids warranties if you paint them at all. Our old garage door manufacturers are the same way. They sold carriage style wood doors that cost an arm and a leg, but if you painted them a dark color then the entire warranty was null and void.
I can attest for black absorbing heat. I have a black exterior door. My trim is black and I have a black door. The air temp was maybe 55 degrees, but a bright sunny day. The door was HOT to touch. HOT!
I can't imagine when the air temp is 90's. Something I did not anticipate when making my choices in the design center.
Deterioration can happen fast or slow. It just depends on how hot you get the material. 1000*F will destroy a home much faster than 0*F and it follows a curve. Think of it as speeding up oxidation. An extreme example of this is when you are brazing a copper line set. When oxygen is present it wears the copper over time to a dullish look. You can sand it down to shiny again but overtime it will happen again. When brazing and bringing the copper to above 1000* or so the inside of the copper pipe will form black soot on it even though the flame is on the outside of the pipe. To solve this you flow an inert gas through the pipe and viola no more soot, although it would be hard to surround your house with say nitrogen and you not pass out. It happens with all materials but generally the more fragile the faster it happens. The whole ashes to ashes dust to dust thing. It's easily noticed with a piece of paper left in the sun and then compared to a piece that was inside out of the sun. You'll see the immediate discoloring maybe a yellowish color and if it continues the color get's darker and darker. So in general things that reflect heat or block it last longer as the others eluded to.
I can attest for black absorbing heat. I have a black exterior door. My trim is black and I have a black door. The air temp was maybe 55 degrees, but a bright sunny day. The door was HOT to touch. HOT!
I can't imagine when the air temp is 90's. Something I did not anticipate when making my choices in the design center.
I'd NEVER go with black unless I was deep in total shade....maybe not even then.
I once bought a house that was the same dark brown as a can of Hersheys Choc Syrup. Even in North Dakota the west side would get so hot you couldn't put your hand on it.
In side was miserable hot, too, and I couldn't wait til I could afford an air conditioner. It needed repainting every few years, even tho it was a rough-sawn wood siding. The paint still let loose every 3-5 years on the west & south sides (one time I didn't even re-paint the N & E sides because the paint there was still great!). After about 10 years, I decided to paint it a dark cream color. Thought I had a new house! Summer elect bill dropped 1/3-1/2, but the winter one only went up a little.
This was a small 1 story ranch style home.
Oh, and another thing....I couldn't get anything to grow on the S or W sides, except hollyhocks, when it was the dark color. Everything needed more than 2x as much water as the other sides and still looked heat stressed & usually died before our short summer was through.
Has anyone ever thought of painting a house black? I personally think it would certainly make the house look way more attractive with dark colors, like dark red and blue along with it.
I know some people find dark colors "depressing".
When I visited Concord, MA I noticed how alot of the houses had dark exteriors-- black, dark grey, navy blue, dark brown, etc. I think this had something to do with a house blending in and being part of nature rather than being separte from and standing apart from nature (there were many large trees, lakes, and giant rocks. I thought these houses looked great. A few reasons why I think it worked:
* they were historic homes , i.e., they had architecture similarities
* most were made of wood
* instead of the house being read as a single element (standing out), it read as a larger element/a neighborhood
* it was once an area for creative people and free thinkers (i.e., artists, writers, philosophers, etc.). Could be a type of self-expression
I can attest for black absorbing heat. I have a black exterior door. My trim is black and I have a black door. The air temp was maybe 55 degrees, but a bright sunny day. The door was HOT to touch. HOT!
I had the same problem with a house in Virginia. The house had a southern exposure so the black door would get really hot in the summer. Didn't help that the door was made steel too. And I needed to paint it every year to keep it as black as I wanted.
Temperatures aside, I really liked the black house shown in the pic of this thread.
My mother had the walls of a room done black years ago. Of course, she used an interior decorator to select colors, furniture, correct lighting. etc. It was gorgeous! If one knows what they're doing, black can be really exciting. If not......ewwww.
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