House of Many Colors - Page 2

Involving a designer obviously can help bring a paint scheme to life, and help homeowners make informed choices that can be incorporated into their project goals. For the X-100, the designer's final results were outstanding; the painting scheme managed to maintain the cohesiveness and flow that make mid-century modern living so seamless and in harmony with the outdoors.

Nick Pierce, veteran owner of N Style Painting, a family-owned company based in San Jose and the Sacramento area, agrees with the seamless approach, and finds that "indoor-outdoor views do present a set of challenges. But I personally think things look when the paint color matches and flows throughout, instead of changing and becoming a different color."

Many of the older Eichlers were designed with eaves and soffits that were stained with a semi-transparent, whitewashed type of stain that continued seamlessly from the interior to the exterior, an important design feature that is often not appreciated.

"It's part of the original Eichler palette," says Pierce. "Some clients want that look—they don't want to look out their wall-to-wall windows and see something different than what's inside."

Looking at the relationships between the interior and exterior of the Eichler home is key to a successful painting project, agrees Lou Palladino of Palladino Painting, whose company has been painting Peninsula and South Bay Eichlers since 1989.

"Sometimes people don't understand the relationship or see the relevance, but it's a design issue," he explains. "The uniformity of surfaces needs to transition; it's not a separated space. This is a frequent issue that comes up, and it's all part of the conversation."

When choosing exterior colors for an Eichler home, as initial points of reference take a look at the other Eichlers nearby on the street. The color gray, for instance, has become a popular color—perhaps overused in some neighborhoods—leaving the affected streetscapes in need of diversification in its overall color presentation.

So while we may admire a neighbor's home, an entire block of dark brown or charcoal Eichlers diminishes a neighborhood's overall appeal. Without being checked, a street can become dominated by one color that may be trendy, resulting in a drab, overall effect that detracts from the uniqueness of each individual home.

Glessner, for instance, painted her Sunnyvale Eichler's exterior gray with a red/orange front door accent long before those colors gained popularity. "Gray goes with everything," she says, "and depending upon which gray you go with, you can have a warm palette or a cold palette. It actually is a great color—but so many of my neighbors copied it, so now I'm in the position to have to try something different."

"There needs to be diversity, but sometimes people are not too imaginative," adds Glessner. "They don't want to reinvent the wheel, and they can't all afford a designer. But no matter what you're doing, it needs to be tasteful."