| Exteriors | Queen Anne House | Ravenna Jewel | |
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Our Latest Exterior Project: Queen Anne House I designed the exterior of a turn of the century three-story house in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. I had already designed a good deal of the interior: see "Queen Anne Aerie". This house sits on a steep prominence in one of the finest neighborhoods in the city, and looks southward across the sweep of the Puget Sound and the downtown waterfront. The house is shingle sided, with some new construction at the first and third floor levels, but mostly original. It was last painted in a light taupe, even beige, on the body, with stark white trim detailed with dark green at the edges. For the new body color we chose a rich complex blue-green, or green-blue (Benjamin Moore "Newburg Green"). For the trim I originally wanted to go for a deeper color than the usual white, but my clients favored light trims. I meditated upon this, and received the word "nautical" as a guideline. Inside the house are many pictures of water, and boats, and the husband of the couple is a sailor. The body of the house already looked like the ocean with its rich deep Neptunian blue. So I went with one of my favorite BM colors, "Twisted Oak Path", a warm deep yellow-tannish white that defies categorization, and put it up on some trim. It looked like ivory. Then we added BM "Country Redwood" for the fine detail edges of all the trim, and suddenly we had a turn-of-the-century sailor suit, complete with red piping. Unmasking the mailbox I discovered that it was the brass button. For the bottom foundation band we chose the darkest chocolate brown which beautifully grounds and warms the color scheme, also accented with the red. And at the top, a muted gold to adorn the fan-light gables. The red at first felt a little bright to the clients. Later, in context, it was amazing to them to see that it's really a very earthy red, with lots of brown and gold in it. It's important to remember in the course of any job, come with however much inspiration it may, that though your intuition may be the right move for the moment, the final color decision rests with your clients. |
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