Paint Quest 1st Attempt

I decided to work on picking paint colors today. I had an idea of what I wanted, but didn't know exactly what I wanted. Further complicating my choices (or limiting them), my house is in a pretty colorful neighborhood.

These are the houses across the street from my house. There's a white house, a light grey one, a recently painted dark green one, a mint green one, and directly across from me is a baby blue house.

Next door to me is a mid-range dark yellow house. It seems more paper-bag brown than yellow in this picture, but it's because of the limited daylight. On the other side of me is a brick house.

So if I don't want my house to be the same color as my neighbors, I have a lot of options eliminated. I did remember that Sherwin Williams had a program on their website where you could upload a picture and then superimpose colors on it. So I played with this program for a long time this afternoon. It's a great tool but it was a little frustrating: think of etch-n-sketch, but on the computer and controlled by a mouse.

I also researched some historical colors and found ideas to help me figure out what I wanted.

I finally had a scheme I kept going back to. I loved the way Sherwin Williams' program depicted the colors on my house, and I thought it would work well with my existing brick and would highlight my house's features and give it a little personality. So off I went to buy some samples...

And here is my first attempt at picking out colors. These patches have two coats on them, applied rather quickly back to back. But I knew from this much that I absolutely hated it. I somehow wound up picking almost exactly the same color for the new trim as what is existing on the siding now! And the brown that perfectly complimented my brick without being too dark on my computer monitor was horribly dark on the house. I did like the red I picked for the window sash, but it might not be quite what I was looking for.

Here is a close up view of the colors. The far left is the siding/main body color, the middle is the trim color, and the far right is the window sash color. So you can see where I was going, but this is not it. At all. I think it is too literal of what I was aiming for, a darker body, a lighter trim, and a nice accent to pop the window sashes. In some professional color schemes, I noticed they also used an off white for select woodwork, such as porch railing and columns, and a black to ground it, in iron work or the porch floor.

I have a ways to go. I don't feel like I wasted the day, but I am a little frustrated that my first attempt was no where near what I was aiming for. I do know that there are about 6 houses in 2 blocks on my street in some shade of green, so that's out. And I am glad that I actually bought and applied the samples to see, because I would never know otherwise. The whole process makes me a little more shy about making these choices, but also more confident, it's hard to explain.

I'm basically thinking now to stay with neutrals, some sort of tan for the body, or maybe a dark grey. But it's a small house, so I don't want it too dark. But I want it to look young and fresh. I don't want the grey to make it feel cold. I just don't know. Maybe I'll enlist the help of a designer.

Any ideas or suggestions for inspiration?