
SKY & SUN - IN DEFENSE OF COLOR
Alright everyone - the questions and comments are starting to come in from many of you regarding the house colors. Some like it and some are - shall we say - not so crazy about it. Comments range from - Really cool! - to - Can I get my Starbucks card punched here?- to my favorite so far, -Hey Chris, put up an arch and sell burgers! (Thank you Scott G for this honest declaration after his third Mai Tai of the night this past Friday). We actually put a serious amount of thought into the color choices and so I want to explain it to everyone so that they can put the decisions into context. Note that this doesn't mean you have to like it - and it should be known that this is an ongoing experiment for us as well - and one that we're continuing to evaluate on a daily basis as construction continues.
Anyway, permit me to climb on my blogging soapbox and wax architectural for a moment.
We spent a lot of time reviewing colors and trying to tie the house into palettes that are seen around the valley. We had a number of choices. Browns, tans, and grays abound in both the rocks above the house and in the brush that turns tan/brown during the course of each summer. During the winter and spring, we see interesting greens ranging from light sages to deeper forests. And finally, we have abundant sunlight and blue skies that offer a nearly endless spectrum of blues, gray-blues, and golds depending on cloud cover, time of day, etc.
The safe choice was to go in the tan/brown/gray direction. Just about every house in the valley has chosen something from that palette - and ultimately we did as well - but I wanted something extra and different. Lighter sage greens combined with some tans were also seriously considered - the nearby Winterton house used a very light sage/almost tan color for example. But the colors that made the greatest statements were primarily in the -sky and sun- palettes. So we took a deep breath, decided not to play it safe and chose to move down that path. As noted above, we will still be using lots of gray/brown colors found in the extensive masonry on the exterior and the roof which will remain a galvanized silver color and hopefully help tie the blue/gray house color in with the masonry. That's the theory anyway.
Finally, if you take a look at the above set of images, you will see how various shades of sky and sun are seen in nature and on actual houses. Variations of sunlight in the form of a montage of sunset photos (upper left) , a picture of the local terrain taken recently on a Rhino trek with Kit (lower left), and another application of blue and yellow used on a house up in the Seattle area. I'm not crazy about the house itself but use it as an example of color.
The house in the lower right corner has been a major inspiration. This house is built out of cinderblock, has a metal roof, and the tower you see in the image is made of a stained wood. Furthermore, it's located in an area with similar topography to here as you can see from the mountain peaks in the distance and abundant dried up brush in the foreground. We chose to avoid any type of exposed wood on the exterior due to the potential for fires but we liked how this gray and yellow fit in with the overall terrain - rising above it without overwhelming it.
As to the specific colors we chose, the bluish gray has an amazingly wide variation of shading depending on how the sunlight hits it. I was playing around with the Photoshop color sampling tool the other day and grabbed about a dozen different variations on the color of the house from the photographs I've shot so far - depending on the location, amount of sun hitting the surface of the building, cloud cover, and time of day. I'll admit that it takes some getting used to but it's interesting how the colors on the house can change dramatically from minute to minute.
The gold/yellow color also has quite a bit of variation in it depending on the amount of sunlight hitting the surface of the house but has been a fairly comfortable choice so far. I like the warmth and brightness of this color and it effectively accomplishes that "sun" connection that we set out to make.
Will it all work in the end? I like to think so but we shall see.