We Got The Blues

Our little back porch turned storage shed has seen close to every shade of blue under the sun over the past couple of weeks - dark blues, light blues, greenish blues, purplish blues, greyish blues. Squeaky blues, happy blues. Dramatic blues, boring blues.

I have amassed an impressive collection of little Valspar paint tester jars (if you want to test a blue, ping me. Odds are I have a tester for it ...heh).

Then I stumbled across Rebecca's blog "Simply Natural Mom" and discovered the beautiful color scheme she and her family (and neighbors) chose for their Craftman-style home which is just a few years younger than our little old house. She was so nice to tell me the secret of the color scheme for her house because it looks just perfect!

Unfortunately, in the end, Benjamin Moore's "Hale Navy" looked just too dark on our house - more blackish navy - and it just didn't work but "Roxbury Carmel" is as delicious as it sounds and is a lovely accent color! Instead of "Barely Beige" for our trim color we are currently fancying "Monterey White" from Benjamin Moore's historic color collection.

So which blue did we choose, you wonder?

In the end, I took several testers and mixed my own: a greyish blue that's deep and rich, not too blue and not too grey and not too dark. We are calling it "Stuckenberg Blue" in honor of the first couple moving into our little old house when it was brandnew and smelled of fresh plaster and paint.

I tested the whole color scheme on the back entrance, and I have to admit I do love it. Who'd have thought?

We definitely learned just how important it is to test exterior colors on a larger scale and in different areas on your house. Not only does paint look about two shades lighter outside (as opposed to one or two shades darker inside) but the light your house receives also has a huge impact on how colors will look. Picking color from a photo on houzz.com didn't work either - what looked like a stunning deep blue-green color on the house in the picture, turned out to be a muddy dark green on ours ...ugh! No-thing like the vibrant color in the photo.

So test, test, and test again.

Even if it turns your house into a crazy looking piece of modern art.