Paint Colors for the Maison Mansard

There have been so many questions about the paint colors for the Maison Mansard, so I thought I’d share a bit about the process I used to choose them.

 

Photo: Restoring Your Historic House, Scott Hanson

Victorians liked color for their exteriors.  The early victorian period typically had custom mixed colors, but towards the end of the 19^th century pre-mixed colors started to become available.  Scott Hanson of Restoring Your Historic House has shared this color swatch from an early paint company in Portland, Maine.  And I used it as inspiration for our Second Empire Home.

 

But it was a little tricky because I wanted to use pre-painted siding.  I choose LP’s Smartside smooth finish for two reasons - 1) smooth siding is a more historically accurate look and 2) it won’t need painting for 5-10 years.  That makes it much easier for the future homeowner.

 

But that meant I had to do the body of the house in one of their predefined colors.  That was a bit limiting, since many of these colors were very ‘modern’ looking and didn’t really work with an old house.  I also wanted to pick a lighter shade, because I’ve learned that mansards typically had siding a darker shade than the main house.  And finally, the houses on either side are gold/buff/yellow shades and I didn’t want 3 houses in a row to be similar colors.

 

So, I choose the lightest blue color – called Summit Blue.  There aren’t a lot of blue houses on the street, and it will allow us to use a darker blue for the trim.  

But then I needed to find a couple of accent colors, to highlight all the trim work we installed.  After lots and lots and lots of experimentation, I choose a dark green and a bold gold.  They’re also on the Portland Paint company’s paint chips (although why would anyone call a paint color Drab???  This was obviously before marketing departments got involved with paint color names!)  Is it historically accurate?  Who knows? Because the house was moved in 1960 and we couldn’t find any good photos, figuring out the original color wasn't possible.  But I’m really pleased with the combo and it seems to compliment all the woodwork trim that we included.

So here are a few photos with the color combinations.

There isn't a lot of the contrasting accent color on the house - but those little details really make the trim we've added stand out!  And we've gotten lots of compliments from folks as they've walked by and seen the color scheme come to life.  

It's hard to see in the photo, but all the soffits are painted the green accent color

 

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