How do you choose exterior house colours?

Start with what won't change on the house

Your colour scheme has to work with everything that's staying put. A new body colour is easy to change in ten years. A roof, a brick base or a stone feature wall isn't. So list the fixed stuff first and build around it.

• Roof colour. It's a big block of colour, and it's usually staying.
• Brick, stone or blockwork you won't paint. Look at the undertone up close, not from the street.
• Window frames, garage door and pavers. If they're staying, they're part of the scheme.
• What the walls are made of. Dulux's exterior guide says wood and clay in brown and terracotta hues suit warmer tones, while concrete in greys and blues suits cooler tones.
• Which walls cop the afternoon sun. Taubmans makes the point for front doors: darker colours can absorb more heat, so it's worth considering orientation and sun exposure. The Dulux figures below show why that matters for walls too.
• The style of the house. Heritage weatherboard Queenslanders usually call for traditional colour palettes, and our high-end project painters work on plenty of them.

Once that list is done, a lot of colours rule themselves out. That's a good thing. Fewer options, faster decision.

Dark colours take on far more heat in Queensland sun

Dark exterior colours soak up most of the sun that hits them, and that heat is hard on paint. Dulux publishes two numbers on its colour pages. Light reflectance value (LRV) is low for dark colours and high for light ones. Solar absorptance (SA) measures how much heat a surface absorbs, as Dulux explains on its roofing page. Higher SA, hotter wall.

Dulux's Weathershield ColourGuard page spells out what that heat does. Paint in direct sun gets extremely hot, dark colours most of all, and that can lead to bubbles and blisters. Sun also breaks paint down into a dusty film called chalking, which Dulux says can be very prominent on dark colours. Fade from the sun's bleaching is usually slow, and some walls can fade faster than others.

Going by Dulux's own page, a dark colour on a wall in direct sun is the mix it flags for blistering and chalking. That's why we'll tell you before we start if a colour won't hold on a west wall. For how long each finish tends to last, see how long exterior paint lasts.

Heat-reflective paint lets you go darker with less heat

If you've got your heart set on charcoal, a paint made for dark colours takes some of the sting out. Dulux says Weathershield ColourGuard uses heavy duty reflective pigments that bounce back part of the visible and infrared light. The coating heats up less than a dark paint with normal pigments, so it's under less stress. Dulux claims your dark colour lasts up to twice as long as traditional premium exterior paints.

You'll also hear about Dulux InfraCOOL. That one's a roof product. Dulux says colours with InfraCOOL technology have a lower solar absorptance, which keeps darker roof colours cooler than the standard version. It's offered on marked Acratex roof colours in gloss only. Dulux's Acratex Cool Roof Residential reflects up to 90% of the sun's total light energy, according to its product page. Handy if you're redoing the roof too, but it isn't a wall paint.

Dulux Weathershield and Taubmans All Weather do most of our exterior work. Taubmans says All Weather resists dirt, UV damage and extreme weather. For which system suits a salty, coast-facing wall, read the right exterior paint for coastal homes.

Dark colours add 15 to 30% in our pricing

Dark colours usually need extra coats to cover properly, so our pricing adds 15 to 30% for them. The instant estimate on our contact page doesn't ask about colour for exterior jobs, so we confirm this at the site visit. Here's what the loading does to the guide ranges for a single-storey home in good condition, standard repaint. Figures include GST and are rounded to the nearest $100.

Our premium tier is for jobs with higher prep, a premium finish and difficult colours. These are guide ranges, not quotes. The instant estimate gives the light and mid colour range, and we firm up the price after a free site visit. Our exterior house painters page covers what the job involves.

Body, trim and accent: build a scheme in layers

A good exterior scheme has a main body colour, a trim colour and one accent. Dulux suggests an accent for the front door, letterbox and window frames, plus a contrasting trim colour for eaves, fascias and gutters. Keep it to that and the house reads as one design.

Mixed materials or two levels? Dulux suggests painting in two tones where a house has different materials, split levels or clear division lines. Going white? Whites carry undertones that show up next to other colours, surfaces and even the plants in your garden. Dulux says moody greys, blues, reds and greens make a home look solid and grounded, with a contrasting accent that pops on doors, windows and trims.

Test colours on the house before you commit

Colour on a screen looks different on a wall in full sun. Dulux says on-screen colours are a guide only. Test on the house itself, in this order.

1. Upload a photo of your house to the Dulux colour visualisation tool to narrow down a shortlist.
2. Grab A4 swatches or stickers. Dulux makes stickers in its 80 most popular colours.
3. Buy sample pots for the last two or three. Dulux sells 100ml pots online, with bigger sizes at stockists.
4. Put samples on a sunny wall and a shaded wall, next to the roof, brick or trim they'll sit beside.
5. Check them morning, midday and evening. Dulux says test at different times of day.
6. Leave them up for at least three days, as Dulux recommends, before you decide.

On high-end jobs we mock up colours on site and work to the design intent, often alongside the architect or designer. We paint right across the Sunshine Coast. See the areas we cover, including Noosa.