Tag Archives: siding colors

Building Colors: Unlimited Choices!

Yesterday I started talking a little bit about one of the hardest things to choose on a building – colors. This is one of those subjects where I feel totally out of my element, but because we get so many folks asking “what color should I choose for….?”, I feel I can share some of the basic “how to’s” I’ve learned over the years.  It has always amazed me in the thousands of sales I’ve personally been involved with, how many folks really struggle over this one last “choice” on their pole building kit: colors.  And it’s not just the women who hem and haw over which colors to put where, which trims to match the roof or siding, and will almond or white doors and windows match better?

Whether you choose wood, steel, or vinyl for siding, and shingles, steel or tile for roofing, the first consideration is that your building’s roofing material, siding and trim can all be different colors.  By using a highly contrasting trim against the siding, definition is created at corners and openings. Most of the time, (and I do say “most”), trim around the roof matches the roof. But it doesn’t have to!

Accent panels can be used on the walls to bring out trim colors.

Want the corners to stand out?  Have the first steel panel at each corner be the same color as the trim.  Industrial or shop buildings often do this.  It just helps to make them appear not so “plain”.  A variation on this is to skip to the second panel of the walls to match the trim.

Afraid your building will look too tall?  If you don’t plan on insulating the walls, polycarbonate eave lights on sidewalls make your building look shorter.  Wainscot can do this too.

What is wainscot?  This is where the lower three feet (approximately) of your building is a different color than the upper wall areas of the building, and often the wainscot matches either the roof or the corner trim color.  Wainscot can also be done in brick or stone, for a richer look.  It also guards heavily against any damages should a lawnmower pick up a stone or sharp object poking holes in the siding.

Trims do not have to all be the same color.  We have had people use as many as three or four different color trims on one building.  Every single time I see someone pick more than one color for trim, my eyes start to glaze over…only to be truly awed when I see the result.  Obviously my place is not in color design!

Accent basic colors with brightly colored doors.  Besides basic white, overhead and entry doors often come in other colors.  Be sure to get doors which are not merely “primed” but factory painted.  Most doors are only warrantied for 30 days after you install them (if only primed). So if you buy primed doors, the best thing to do is paint these doors before you install them – and then they can be painted a color of your own choosing.  My solution for one of my own pole buildings was to take my 3 entry doors to a body shop specializing in painting cars.  They did a great job and my bright red doors are a standout against the white siding.

Agricultural building?  Sliding door steel can be a different color than the siding.  Dutch doors for horse stalls are available in more than a dozen colors!  Panels for crossbucks can come painted with many color choices as well.

Bottom line – your building’s appearance is your opportunity to express yourself and your individuality, so my advice is….go wild!   I love my red doors on my shop!

Check out the Paint a Building feature on our website to play around with color combinations.   You can click on the paint can on our website home page, or click here to play with building colors:

https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/building.swf

Or email us for a color chart.

Color me –  Mike

Pole Buildings: Colorize it!

If we are going out for an evening on the town, my wife won’t let me pick the clothes I am going to wear.  While I am sure it has something to do with my inability to match colors, even I sometimes wonder about colors people choose for their pole buildings.

Several years ago we had a customer pick their pole building colors and to our absolute horror, they chose Evergreen walls, Brick Red roof and White trim! Everyone in the office who looked at this questioned the sanity of their choice. The consensus was…it would look great at Christmas, but what about the other 11 months of the year?

Turns out – everyone was wrong – except the customer.  The building looked great!  It looked clean and sharp with all the contrasts, and surprisingly, no one started singing “Jingle Bells” when they saw it. Obviously the customer knew far better than we did.

Color choices can be a difficult decision.  Do you try to match or complement colors of other buildings?  If this is your first building on the building site, do you pick out bright colors so the building makes a statement, or soft “blending in” colors so whatever else you choose, it won’t look like you plucked these randomly from a color chart?

Even though I don’t claim to be an expert, and would never, ever help you choose your colors, there are a few things I’ve learned over the years.

Trying to “match” pole building colors against another existing structure is nearly impossible. By the way, I’m talking about colors for all types of siding and roofing materials.  Since color pigment bases fade at different rates, what starts off as a close “match” may not end up close in a few years.  When I added on a dormer type closet to our house with steel siding and roofing a few years ago, my wife asked me why I chose a “totally different shade of blue” for the roofing.  She gave me one of those wifely “uh huh!” looks when I calmly told her I bought the “exact same” color we always had, but it was 15 years after the original steel roof had been installed.

We live by the lake, and the sun/winds and water effect are harsh on our roofing and siding.  The blue still looks great…just not the same exact “shade” as was originally put on the house.  You would never notice it had faded, unless you put on a few sheets of all new roofing – in supposedly the “same” color.  It was just this past summer (and 5 years of fading) I smugly pointed out to my bride how “see, honey how the roofing all matches now.”  I think she mumbled something about “lucky for you”!

Speaking of sun/water effects – keep this in mind in picking out the darker colors.  If you don’t mind a little fading, this is not a problem.  But darker colors also love the sun, so will make it warmer inside your building.  My wife insisted on a black roof for our huge accessory building, which I have to admit looks awesome against the white walls with black trims to set off windows and doors. I offset the sun-loving color of black with super-duper insulation and good venting/cooling.  It all worked out just fine.  And the extra insulation actually cut down on our heating costs in the winter.

So back to trying to “match” colors – you have two solutions.

The first is to do a “switch”.  Use a color close to the existing buildings trim color for the body of the new building and the existing “body” color for the trim.  This takes away from noticing a few differences in color shade.  We get a lot of folks who do this switch and it seems to tie all the buildings together. We had a customer who had painted lap siding on their house, but “switched” placement for steel roofing & siding colors which were “close” on their garage.  We had to look hard to tell they are not an almost perfect match.

The second choice is to just not try to match at all.  Choose colors which “complement” – (i.e. -look good together), and you end up looking like a professional design and color artist!

Check out the Paint a Building feature on our website to play around with color combinations.   You can click on the paint can on our website homepage, or click here to play with colors:

https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/building.swf

Have fun picking colors and if you call to ask my advice on pole building colors, I’ll gladly hand the phone to my wife!