Selecting Paint Colors
Welcome to the vibrant world of color with Crash of Rhinos Painting, a leader in residential exterior painting in the Valley of Arizona. With a decade of experience and a deep understanding of the local climate and architecture, we have developed an unerring eye for helping homeowners select the perfect palette for their homes. Painting isn’t just about a fresh coat—it’s about transformation, and our goal is to bring out the full potential of your home’s exterior.
Choosing the right color for your home is more than just a design decision; it’s a powerful tool that can enhance your home’s curb appeal and increase its market value. A carefully selected color palette can breathe life into an aging exterior, accentuate the architectural details of your home, and create a pleasing harmony with the surrounding landscape. The impact of color cannot be underestimated—it sets the tone for your home, creating the first impression for visitors and passers-by.
At Crash of Rhinos Painting, we understand these nuances and use our expertise to guide you through this crucial decision, balancing aesthetics, durability, and the unique influences of the our area, all to create a result that is not just pleasing to the eye, but also adds tangible value to your home.
Picking Exterior Paint Colors for Desert Climates
The desert climate of the Southwest presents its unique set of challenges and opportunities when it comes to selecting exterior paint colors. It’s crucial to consider not only the color you see on the surface but also its undertones—those subtle hues that can be brought out under different lighting conditions. For instance, a seemingly simple white paint may have undertones of yellow or blue, which can either harmonize or clash with the desert surroundings.
Earthen Colors:
- Varying shades of beige, tan, brown, and terracotta tend to work well in desert landscapes.
- These hues naturally complement the surrounding terrain and create an organic, grounded look.
Stark and Vibrant Colors:
- Extremely vibrant colors can often clash with the local environment and may not be as appealing in the harsh daylight.
Weather Considerations:
- With an average of 299 sunny days per year, UV protection becomes a paramount consideration.
- Ultraviolet radiation can cause colors to fade, particularly darker hues, which absorb more heat and tend to fade more quickly.
High-Quality Paint:
- Paint with built-in UV protection can mitigate fading, helping to maintain the vibrancy of your chosen color over time.
Crash of Rhinos Painting helps you navigate these considerations, ensuring that the color you choose will not only reflect your style and enhance your home’s architecture but also withstand our climate and harmonize with its unique desert beauty.
Dunn-Edwards Paint
The choice of paint for your home’s exterior isn’t merely an aesthetic decision, it’s also about responsibility. High-quality paint can protect the structure of your home from harsh weather conditions, help in reducing energy costs, and resist fading to ensure the color you choose today retains its vibrancy for years to come. That’s why, at Crash of Rhinos Painting, we proudly use Dunn-Edwards paint, a brand synonymous with quality and durability.
One of Dunn-Edwards’ flagship products that we frequently recommend is Evershield. This premium, ultra-durable paint is specifically formulated to withstand the harshest weather conditions, offering superior resistance to mildew, fading, chalking, and peeling. It’s the perfect blend of beauty and protection, offering an exceptional, lasting finish while safeguarding your home’s exterior.
The quality of paint relies significantly on the caliber of its constituents: resins, pigments, and binders. Resins provide the paint with adhesion and durability, pigments give the paint its color and opacity, and binders act as a glue, holding these components together. Dunn-Edwards is meticulous about the quality of these ingredients, creating paints that offer superior coverage, longevity, and color retention.
Interestingly, Dunn-Edwards has its manufacturing facility right here in Arizona. This local manufacturing ensures that their products are designed with a deep understanding of the unique weather conditions of the region. It’s an advantage that reflects in the performance of their paints, which are formulated to withstand the intense sunlight and heat of Arizona’s climate.
By choosing Dunn-Edwards paint, you’re investing in a product that’s designed to endure, delivering not just stunning aesthetics but also tangible long-term benefits. It’s a choice that underscores your commitment to maintaining your home’s exterior while ensuring it looks its best, year after year.
LRV (Light Reflective Value)
Choosing the right color for your home involves more than just picking a favorite shade. It also means understanding factors like Light Reflective Value (LRV), which can play a crucial role in the longevity and aesthetic appeal of your paint job. LRV measures the percentage of light a paint color reflects, with values ranging from 0% (absolute black, absorbing all light) to 100% (pure white, reflecting all light).
Why is LRV important? For starters, it impacts how we perceive color. Higher LRV values can make a space seem larger and brighter, while lower LRV values tend to make a space feel smaller and cozier. But beyond perception, LRV plays a critical role in a paint’s durability, especially in a sun-soaked climate.
In our intense Arizona sun, darker colors with low LRVs can absorb more heat, causing them to fade faster. This quick fading can present a challenge for touchups. The original color on the house fades, while the touchup paint remains the same, resulting in a mismatch. Typically, touchup paint can be usable on a house exterior for about a year due to fading, but with darker colors, this timeline can be as short as six months.
On the other hand, lighter colors with high LRVs reflect more sunlight, preserving the color and the integrity of the exterior surface over a longer period. However, high LRV colors, especially bright whites, can be a double-edged sword in Arizona. While they reflect sunlight well, they can also show dirt and dust more prominently, a particular concern given our frequent dust storms.
At Crash of Rhinos Painting, we pay special attention to LRV when advising on color selection. It’s not just about the immediate aesthetic appeal, but about ensuring the longevity and maintenance of your color choice. We balance the aesthetics, durability, and the unique Arizona climate to guide you in choosing a color that is beautiful, durable, and practical for the long term. We’ll help you navigate these nuances, creating an exterior that not only reflects your style but also stands the test of time.
HOAs
In many neighborhoods, Home Owners Associations (HOAs) play a significant role in maintaining the aesthetic harmony and property value of the community. Often, they have specific rules and guidelines regarding exterior paint colors, which can sometimes make the process of choosing a color for your home more complex.
At Crash of Rhinos Painting, we’re well-versed in these HOA color regulations and use our expertise to make this process seamless for you. We understand that every neighborhood has its unique character and charm, which is often carefully preserved through these rules. Our goal is to help you select a color that not only resonates with your personal style but also meets your HOA’s guidelines, creating an exterior that enhances both your home and your community.
Many HOAs now have online customer portals where residents can see the latest pre-screened color palettes. This tool can be an excellent starting point in your color selection process. These portals often also include online forms for requesting paint color approval, making the process even more streamlined.
We’re here to assist you every step of the way, from exploring the approved color palettes to submitting your color choice for approval. With Crash of Rhinos Painting, navigating your HOA’s color rules is no longer a challenge, but a journey to find the perfect color for your home.
Color Selection
When it comes to selecting colors for your home’s exterior, a good starting point is to choose three main colors and three accent colors. This variety gives you the flexibility to compare and contrast, making it easier to eliminate colors based on their undertones. Undertones can dramatically change how a color appears in different lighting conditions or against other colors. Having several options to compare against each other can help you identify these undertones and make a more informed decision.
It’s essential to start this process with physical paint swatches, not just online colors. Every computer screen renders colors differently due to its color calibration settings, so a color you see online may not look the same in real life. Most paint companies, including Dunn-Edwards, offer a service where you can order paint swatches online, and they will mail them to you.
Once you have narrowed your choices down to one or two colors, apply them to a poster board and tape them to the walls of your house. This allows you to observe how the colors look in both sun and shade and at different times of the day. Remember, it’s advisable not to paint directly on the house as the sample paint can sometimes alter the texture of the stucco.
This process of testing colors in various lighting conditions and against the textures and features of your home can significantly aid in finding the color that’s just right for you.
Color Renderings
Choosing the right paint color for your home’s exterior can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be a solitary task. Dunn-Edwards, the brand we trust for our paint supplies, offers invaluable assistance in this process. Visiting a local Dunn-Edwards location can transform your color selection journey from daunting to enjoyable.
Dunn-Edwards professional representatives are ready to assist you in making your color choices. Their expertise can take the worry out of selecting colors, guiding you through the process with a clear understanding of factors like undertones, LRV, and the impact of Arizona’s unique light and landscape.
Moreover, Dunn-Edwards provides additional services like samples and renderings. These tools can help visualize how your selected colors would look on your home’s exterior, offering a practical preview before you commit to a decision. You can avail of these services for free when you visit a Dunn-Edwards location.
For a more personalized experience, Dunn-Edwards also offers in-home color consultation services. Though there’s a fee for this service, the convenience and tailored advice it provides can be invaluable. By combining this expert assistance with our guidance at Crash of Rhinos Painting, selecting the perfect color for your home becomes an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
Conclusion
In conclusion, painting your home’s exterior is a significant undertaking that can dramatically enhance your home’s curb appeal, value, and protection from the elements. However, it’s a process that requires careful consideration, especially when it comes to selecting the perfect color. At Crash of Rhinos Painting, we understand the complexities of this process and the unique challenges presented by our desert climate.
From helping you navigate the world of undertones, considering the Light Reflective Value (LRV), to guiding you through HOA color guidelines, we are with you every step of the way. Our partnership with Dunn-Edwards ensures we offer you high-quality paint options with expert guidance in store or at your home.
Moreover, we emphasize the importance of physical color swatches and observing them in different light conditions on your actual home’s surface. This process helps ensure that the color you select works harmoniously with your home’s architecture, landscape, and neighborhood.
Your home is a reflection of your style, and we want to ensure it’s the best representation possible. At Crash of Rhinos Painting, our commitment is not just about providing a fresh coat of paint, but about helping you make informed decisions that result in long-lasting, beautiful exteriors that you can take pride in. So, if you’re ready to embark on a transformative journey with your home’s exterior, we’re here to help make it an exciting and rewarding one.