How can I see different siding or paint colors on my house before committing?
Getting quotes to replace the vinyl siding on our colonial and the contractor keeps asking what color we want. The sample chips are the size of a credit card and they all look the same in the showroom lighting. Last time we picked paint from a chip the whole house came out way more yellow than expected and I stared at that mistake for six years.
How do you all preview siding or paint colors on the whole house before signing off? The contractor just shrugged and said most people pick from the board.
Answers
Never pick from a chip again, color reads completely different at house scale. What I did before our re-side was run a photo of the front through a siding and paint visualizer, it swaps the siding color and material on your actual photo so you see the whole elevation, not a two inch square. Seeing our house in the gray we thought we wanted was enough, it went cold and flat next to the roof and we switched to a warmer shade before ordering anything.
It also spits out a rough cost estimate for the option you are looking at, which was handy for reality checking the contractor quotes. Between that and asking the crew to hang one real panel on the shady side before the full order, we had zero surprises.
Ask the siding rep for full size sample panels, not the chip board. Any decent supplier will loan you 2 or 3 actual panels. Lean them against the house and look at them morning, noon and evening, color shifts a ton over the day and north side vs south side are basically two different colors.
For paint, buy sample quarts and roll a 3x3 foot patch right on the house next to the trim and the roof line. Chips lie, big patches do not. Cheap insurance against staring at a mistake for another six years.
