apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'd much rather live in a brightly colored house than another drab and dull beige house - and if the neighbor chooses a wacky color, it will be much easier for folks to find us:

"I live next to the Green Bay Packer's house"

I used to live in a newish stucco sub-division in a very staid, religious town. The stucco was either beige or "peach", and all the trim and doors were either white or beige. The whole place was a suburban nightmare of blah. I could never go back to that.

Give me a quirky, colourful community any day where everyone at least takes an interest in keeping their homes up.

This is one of those issues that really gets me worked up. If its my house, and I paid for it, I should get to paint it whatever color I like, plain and simple. This issue has come up before especially here in southern california, and it has come up in the context of racism. Many times, people are reacting negatively because they see the brightly painted houses of newly moved in Mexican or Central American neighbors, who paint their houses bright colors like they do in their home county. Well you know what I say to their neighbors, too damn bad. Something similar to this was on the news about 5 years ago, and I liked the fact that many of the reports noted, that really, the brightly painted houses didn't look so bad and in many cases look rather nice, and those people complaining, with the dull beige painted homes, had just really ugly unkept properties. UGH!

There has to be a point where people get to say no. If someone has a "Green Bay Packers House" next door, their property value goes down. Some individuality is OK, but one has to remember that neighborhoods that have these rules and regulations were built together. There needs to be some cohesiveness to keep everything congruent.

I'm all for individuality... thats what makes a neighbourhood - its diversity!

But on the flip side it...I live downtown in a city with beautiful, century old rowhouses and some detached houses. Someone bought the biggest house on the street and did a total reno on it - instead of refinishing the beautiful old bricks, they covered it up in horrible, lawn-green vinyl siding. Such a shame.

We say the house looks like "Great Wolf Lodge"... in this case it would be great if we had a heritage act or something that would ensure at least the original style was preserved.

Gawd. North Americans can be some of the most uptight people on the planet. A loss of freedom is creeping into all aspects of our lives and now they even want to control the colour of your house. I hope they are all hanging out white sheets and towels, oh....that is assuming there is no rule against hanging out laundry.

I'll never live where there is an HOA or a city code that dictates what color I can paint my house (xref Santa Fe, NM). Would I paint my house pink? No, but I'd happily live next door to a pink house, or a green house, because mine might be painted blue.

As for old "historical" neighborhoods ... that's different. You'd know buying in that there were covenants.

Some theorists propose that restrictions like these are the result of subtle racism, partly because brightly painted house exteriors are said to recall house paint colors favored in largely black and Latino populations.

Sometimes a brightly painted house is charming (think Victorian gingerbread). But when it's on a 70's tract house in a sea of earth toned homes, it's gonna look awful.

I grew up in an old neighborhood with no CC&Rs and there were some homes with really neat paint colors - navy blue, hunter green, olive green, yellow, etc. But we were lucky that our neighbors had great taste in my opinion. I'm not sure I would have been so forgiving if someone had chosen purple and orange or something.

But, what can I say, I live in Irvine where CC&Rs were "perfected" and it can seem like the color of your underwear requires submission to the Design Committee...

When I was a kid, there was a nice house about a mile away in a rich neighborhood that was suddenly bright pink one day. The other rich people in the area threw an absolute fit about it. They complained that it would hurt their property values. So the pink house people had to go to court to defend their decision, and guess what? They won!

And I say good for them. I've never lived in a place I could control like that (I've always rented), but if I owned my own house, I'd want the freedom to do whatever I wanted with it. It's your place - it should be any color you want!

In my hometown of Richmond, VA, a prominent couple painted their townhouse pink & purple. The neighbors were aghast, but I thought the house looked great (a friend & I were regular customers of a cafe across the street). If folks are that concerned with a neighbor's color choice, they should move to a neighborhood with an HOA.

I love colorful houses and quirky self-expression, but if you move to an area where they have those rules in place , then I don't think you really have much room to complain.

Where in Richmond was that pink/purple house? There's a BEAUTIFUL pink house downtown that was for sale in spring when the dogwoods in the front yard were blooming. Gosh it was gorgeous.

My BF is having a heart attack about what color I'm painting my house when I get around to it. He knows I want pink, but refuses to live here if I do it ;) I live next door to a sea foam green with orange trim, and across the street from a girl who just moved in and painted her front door pink. There's a smurf blue down the street, and I'm in love with a dark green one further in the neighborhood. It's 1950's surburbia, but there are alot of fun colors in the mix of boring beige and white. My house it currently a pale yellow.

I think people should MYOB if they didn't pay for the property. It won't drive down the value of their property if the next buyer doesn't mind it.

I agree with Jose! I enjoy quirky, Mexican colors.

This is our house:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30028285@N06/2806738909/

Very pretty, Luz.

The gold house with red trim from the article isn't THAT bad. It's better than a sad, weed-overgrown house in disrepair.

I made sure that when we bought our little home that we weren't in a neighborhood that had "neighborhood covenants" aka HOA's. We had rented in a neighborhood that had one and hated it. If folks want to have their neighbors houses look a certain way they should move to neighborhoods where those rules are already in place. I say hooray for colors. I never understand why people are so uptight about "property values going down"; if your property value goes down, you pay less property tax!

There is a house in Seattle that abuts the freeway. The own chose to paint a house-long nude of pin-up Betty on the freeway side. Her only "covering" is the one window on that part of the house. The house is white; the nude is black.

So: Is it fair that all the 100,000 cars that drive by have to look at and share his taste in art? It's a discussion...

I like bright colored houses. There's an electric-sky blue one down the street from me that makes me smile. On the other hand, when a neighborhood has a certain feel to it, bright colors can feel "off."

Overall, I don't like the idea that anyone can dictate something so simple as what color my home is.

Idevere -

Considering the culture of Seattle, I doubt many people are terribly offended.

(Note that I actually live in Seattle, and have seen the Bettie Page house.)

It's nice to have little enclaves here and there where everything looks perfect and similar, but for most of us, diversity is a good thing.

I've always thought the Betty Paige house was wonderfully irreverent.

With a median price for a home in SF at $750,000ish, San Franciscans should be able to paint their houses (an additional $15,000 to $40,000 based on our quotes) any color that they want. Having said that, there is a neon green house in our SF neighborhood that literally makes me ill whenever I see it. I have a physical reaction to the color. I should submit a photo to AT to illustrate the point!

This may be one of those questions that does not have an absolute answer.

I'm frightened at the idea of the government telling me how to paint my house.

It's an example of an erosion of liberty, and should scare all americans who love freedom.

I'm totaly in agreement w/ theambershow. If you want to live in a neighborhood where the color of your house is controlled then ok. But I'd rather live in a neighborhood with diversity. Does that mean I'll like the house colors? Maybe, maybe not, but people have the freedom to paint their house whatever color they want. So long as the homeowner takes care of the property, I'm cool.
Peachpie--there are neighborhoods where hanging your clothes out is against the HOA!

Oh beautiful for spacious skies....for amber waves of beige!

For purple mountains majesty....just not in my back yard!

The photo in the post is from Valparaiso, Chile. All the houses in that city are painted a variety of beautiful colors. The streets are filled with some of the most incredible murals and street art that have been encouraged by the city and residents. It makes the city vibrant and unique.

I live in a neighborhood with an HOA, but most of the houses are brick anyway, so the only thing you can muck with is the trim. Mostly, the HOA is concerned about houses which turn into total weedlots and ban people knocking down existing houses and building mcmansions, and I think those are good things.

There's one person who has kind of a golden orange color and it looks great. They don't really crack down on trim paint but if someone painted the entire brick house golden orange they probably would.

I'm painting my front door either peacock blue or plum soon.

La Luz, I like your house colors a lot.

If I had the unfortunance of moving into a neighborhood where all the houses looked like they came out of a Xerox machine, I would definitely be motivated to paint my house a distinctively different color.

People who paint their house gawdy colors don't have to look at it all the time...their neighbors do!

My house, my property, my choice of what color to paint it. If you don't like to look at it, don't.

Property values go down, in part, when people are willing to sell cheap. You know, say if the house next door is a different color or the person next door is a different color...

I'm offended by the hideous developed-designed houses, not the colours. Paint colour is easy to change, ugly design isn't.

I hate North American subdivisions full of cookie-cutter "tastefully" painted homes in shades of beige. ugh.

err, developer-designed

My motto is paint your home whatever color you like, but for Pete's sake please maintain the exterior of your house and the yards.

Well what about when your neighbors paint their house BRIGHT pink with turqiouse trim - and then all that pink reflects on your white living room walls during the day? How is that fair? It's a nuisance and it shouldn't be allowed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryanscott/1993002312/

An example from the Wolesely area of Winnipeg. I find that neighbourhoods get a reputation for colour (or no colour) and people who appreciate colour tend to buy in places like Wolesely. I don't know anyone who would buy a house in beige world and then paint it wild colours.

We thankfully just moved out of a house where our neighbors had painted their exterior an eye-bleeding medley of hot 80's pink, purple and turquoise. If it had been done by a professional, with some thought involved, it could have possibly been acceptable...maybe.

I will go ahead and admit something awful though: With the massive amounts of renovation that is currently going on in the interior of our house, our yard is awful. I know our neighbors think we are horrible rednecks, but we just can't tackle it until we have addressed the major issues inside.
At least we aren't willfully choosing to add something as hideous as neon purple trim to our neighborhood.

Heh-heh.."rednecks"... it seems that most people in my neighborhood refer to themselves that way.

I live in an area that was mostly built in the 20's and 30's, although a few are older, a few are newer. There are a few houses that are getting colors other than white or beige as they're being renovated, but there's one that's a seafoam green with flagstone halfway up the walls that I think is absolutely gorgeous.

Personally, I love neighborhoods with diversity - if I wanted to live in a neighborhood with beige houses, I'd find one that already had rules in place that restricted the colors. I don't feel that anyone has the right to tell you what color to paint your house if you live in a 'regular' neighborhood. That said, there are a couple of doors I'd like to knock on and tell them to clean up their yard. Even bare dirt would look better than a yard filled with trash, non-working appliances and car seats used for outdoor seating (now THAT'S redneck!!).

I don't think I could handle having heaps of metal in the yard (or the neighbor's for that matter). It's driving me insane to face patchy grass and poorly planted droopy bushes. If I lived next to someone who let their yard go that far, I would have to sneak over and clean while they slept...a dangerous game...

There is a big difference between using color and using it in good taste.