what colors to paint a house with reddish roof and white trim

Painting your historic business firm, a guide to colors and colour schemes

Prepared past John Fiske for the Ipswich Historical Commission and the Architectural Preservation Commune Commission

Part I: COLONIAL AND FEDERAL 1640-1840

Paint was used to delineate the three main visual elements of Colonial and Federal houses:

Body: the walls – usually clapboarded or shingled, sometimes boarded.
Trim: the decorative woodwork that framed the big wall surfaces and frequently the smaller elements such as windows and doors.
Sash: The movable elements – doors, windows, shutters.

Start Period houses rarely painted trim and sash in different colors and so were generally of two colors only; after styles often had three.

Colonial Period (1640-1780)

Starting time Period or Post-Medieval (1640s–1720s)

Architecture: asymmetry, verticality. 17th-century colors were derived from globe, rock or other natural pigments.
Interiors: Earthy reds, indigos, ochre, burnt umber.
Body: clapboards, originally non painted or stained just weathered to dark brown. Chocolate paint appropriate today.
Trim: Unpainted or painted Indian red/Spanish dark-brown to contrast with unpainted body.

Second Period or Georgian (1725-1780)

Architecture: symmetry, horizontality, classical proportions
Georgian houses favored stronger colors from naturally derived pigments. Colors imitating stone structure were popular exteriors, interiors were bolder and brighter than once idea.
Pocket-sized and rural houses ofttimes non painted. Strongly assorted color schemes favored.
Body: dark stone colors, chocolates, orange, ochers, greys and reds.
Trim: Almost e'er white, but a softer, yellower white than today'due south white.
Cornices, window and door casings, cornerboards and molded details often simulated stone – stake grayness, yellowish-white, very pale blue, sometimes with sand blown into the wet paint.
Doors: always dark colour – chocolate, red, green or blue.
Roofs: occasionally ruddy, chocolate or yellow

Federal Period (1780-1830)

Fashionable taste moved abroad from the more robust Georgian toward lighter colors: white, fair, pale shades of stony gray, and ochre. Vivid, clear tones in interiors, ofttimes in dissimilarity with pale trim – creams, pumpkins, sage green, muted blues etc. The 1812 painting guide by Hezekiah Reynolds of CT advised a palette of "white, cream, straw, orangish, pea-greenish, parrot light-green, grass green, scarlet, slate and black." Lighter colors were fashionable, but darker ones were all the same used for more traditional tastes. Contrasts were less marked than on Georgian houses.

Trunk: White, cream, straw were fashionable, but orangish, pea-greenish, ruddy, slate met more than bourgeois, traditional tastes.
Trim: White, or sometimes the same colour equally the body.
Shutters and doors were dark green or black.
House fronts were sometimes painted in fashionable, lighter (and more expensive) colors, while the dorsum and/or the sides were in the more traditional, and cheaper, reds.
Rural houses were often unpainted until the middle of the 19th century.

Greek Revival (1825-1860)

Colors remained traditional with no technological innovation in colors till 1850s, and then the earth-based pigments and natural stone colors of the Federal period are suitable for interiors and exteriors. Interior colors brainstorm to reflect the richness and depth of color of the Victorian menstruum.

Trunk: White or fair, or rock colors (greys, pale blue greys, grey browns, tans) or straw (ochres and yellows.)
Trim: White, off-white, cream
Sash: Typically green doors and shutters, and blackness sash.
The most mutual (virtually standard) colour scheme: White or off-white body, green doors and shutters, black sash.
Rural houses were increasingly painted from 1825 onward.

PART Two: VICTORIAN 1840-1900

Paint was used to delineate the three primary visual elements of Victorian period houses:

Body: the walls – commonly clapboarded or shingled, sometimes boarded.
Trim: the decorative woodwork that framed the large wall surfaces and the smaller elements such every bit windows and doors.
Sash: the movable elements – doors, windows, shutters.
Torso, trim and sash were usually painted different colors. A 3-colour paint scheme was the about common, but later in the catamenia houses were often given four or fifty-fifty five colors.

Victorian compages is characterized by the fact that unlike styles of business firm were popular at the same time. In this respect, information technology differs significantly from Colonial architecture, where styles were sequential rather than simultaneous. In paint colors and pigment schemes, the Victorian period saw a gradual transition toward a wider range of deeper colors and stronger contrasts. There were ii singled-out color periods: 1870 was the turning signal.

Early Victorian (1840-1870)

Common architectural styles: The nigh popular was the Italianate, but Gothic Revival houses were quite common. Paint colors did not modify much from the Federal period: Paints were still mixed by the painter from natural pigments ground into white pb and linseed oil, so many of the world/stone colors continued to be used. The first "color card" published in the The states (1842) included three shades of grey, and three of fawn (called "drab"). Darker, dignified colors were used on larger houses and those in exposed locations: lighter, livelier shades for smaller, more curtained houses. The so-called "positive" colors (white, yellow, red, bluish and blackness) were avoided.

Body: Traditional stone- and earth-colors, soft and naturalistic to alloy in with surroundings.
Trim: Never white, often a darker shade of the body color, or vice-versa if the body was dark. Sometimes body, trim and sash were painted in iii increasingly darker shades of the aforementioned color.
Sash: Often the same as the trim.

Later Victorian (1870-1900)

Mutual architectural styles: 2d Empire/Mansard, Stick, Queen Anne, Shingle. Paints now were mass-produced and mass-marketed in resealable cans. The wider range of colors included both new pastels (rose, peach, terracotta and olive) as well as deeper and more saturated colors. Strong contrasts were favored. Iii-color schemes for the exterior became the norm: one color for the body; a 2d for the trim; the tertiary, ever the darkest, for the sash (doors, sashes, shutters.)

The primary pigments (red, blue, yellowish) were often combined to create new "secondary" colors: orangish, imperial, greens, etc. "Tertiary" colors were a mix of primary and secondary colors: dark mulberry, ginger, moss light-green, brick reds, buff etc. The choice of colors was now guided by "color theory" instead of personal preference. The basis of colour theory was the color wheel, which enabled ii versions of "colour harmony": harmony past illustration and harmony by dissimilarity.

"Harmony by analogy" used adjacent colors on the wheel: e.yard. red/orange, orange/regal, blue/green, xanthous/green, light-green/orangish
"Harmony by contrast" used reverse colors on the wheel: e.g. red/dark-green, blueish/orange, yellowish/purple.

Second Empire/Mansard (1855-1885)

The early houses in the mode continued the Italianate sense of taste for neutral colors: grays, tans, ochers, warm beiges. Later in the period more colors appeared and stronger contrasts became popular: deep tones of russets, olives, greyness-greens, ochers and browns in combination. The aim was to achieve a more formal, urban look.

Body and Trim: ii shades of the same color, unremarkably, merely not always, with the lighter for the trim.
Sash, doors and shutters were black or very dark dark-green, shutters sometimes a very dark shade of the body color.

Stick Style (1860-1890)

Characterized past an abundant use of flat trim boards to ascertain, or create, sections of the clapboarded walls or to impose geometric patterns on them.

Trim and Body: Flat trim boards clearly distinguished from clapboard sheathing, using vibrant, contrasting colors: yellow with dark light-green, dark cherry-red with olive, light and dark gray-dark-green etc.
Sash, doors and shutters: dark only colorful: night brown, deep red or maroon joined the more traditional dark green or blackness.

The Stick style and its colors may be seen equally transitional to the Queen Anne.

Queen Anne (1880-1915)

The architecture was characterized by variety, irregularity, asymmetry. Complex massing of edifice elements, bays, towers, gables, porches, windows of all sizes. Plentiful use of decorative motifs in molded mastic (plaster or sawdust set up into resin.) Walls often clad in both clapboards and shingles, which were ofttimes cut into decorative shapes. Rich 3rd colors were pop, low-cal colors were not. Body, trim and sash always in different colors, but iv- and occasionally five-color schemes were popular.

Body: one or two potent colors (usually different for clapboards and shingles)
Trim: a color unifying the body colors. Often a different accent color was used for decorative features.
Sash: the darkest color on the firm: night green, deep brown, black, deep red, maroon, chocolate, deep umber etc.

Shingle (1880-1900)

"Wooden" and rustic in advent and so colors must be "woody," not lite colors.

Trunk: dark brownish stain, or nighttime brownish/chocolate paint. Dark olives, gray-browns and dark greens as well possible.
Trim: beige or tan to coordinate with body, or night contrasting color – night green, dark olive, maroon.
Sash and doors: nighttime.

Resources

Painting Historic Exteriors: Colors, Application and Regulation. (1998, reprinted 2016), Susan East. Maycock and Sarah J. Zimmerman, Cambridge Historical Commission, 831 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 01928. 617.349.4683. A comprehensive guide to identifying each architectural style, with descriptions of the colors and colour schemes appropriate to it. An essential resource for owners of historic houses.

Historic Colors of America: A Guide to Color, Styles, and Architectural Periods past Historic New England. A brief overview of the main architectural periods/styles, with a list of the colors appropriate to each. Accompanied by a color nautical chart of more than 100 historic colors, developed by HNE in conjunction with California Paints, that are available from California Pants dealers. HNE offers menstruum pigment color consultations to historic abode owners through its Historic Owner membership.

A Field Guide to American Houses,Virginia and Lee McAlester, (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1984.) A guide to all the master architectural styles/periods, illustrating the master features of each, together with typical detailing, geographic distribution and regional variants. Highly recommended.

Benjamin Moore Celebrated Color Collection

Sherwin Williams Historic Drove

williamshistiogge.blogspot.com

Source: https://historicipswich.org/colors/