Outside of a properly massive color specialist like Pantone, Sherwin Williams can be argued to be one of the best companies to look to for excellent choices on exterior and interior colors.
Their picks for the Color of the Year are especially great starting points for homeowners to look at for their designs. Urbane Bronze was the Color of the Year for Sherwin Williams in 2021.
Managing to feel both organic and austere, this earthy gray-beige tone is highly versatile and flexible for all manner of home styles. We’ve compiled a handful of homes that use Urbane Bronze to help spark some ideas for how to use this shade in your own home.
1. White on Urbane Bronze
This contemporary colonial-style suburban home covers just about all of the exterior siding of both floors in Urbane Bronze. The hue is paired with a darker slate grey on the shingled roof, resulting in a relatively dark but classy color palette.
What really ties the home together, however, is the use of white as the accent color throughout the house. Adorning everything from the roof trim and windows to the garage door and the balustrade (i.e. the railing along the porch), the white emphasizes the home’s outlines.
2. Urbane Bronze and Green
This bungalow home coats the exterior in a bold coat of Urbane Bronze paint that immediately allows it to stand out from the relative flatness of white that could be seen as rather boring.
Unlike the previous example, however, a soft minty green is used as the accent color that covers the roof trim, the rafters, the doors, and the windows. While it doesn’t seem like the two colors would work well on paper, the pairing actually works quite well in practice as the Urbane Bronze provides a deep yet solid base color for the accent to stand out.
3. Greige and Beige
One of the reasons why Urbane Bronze manages to be such a versatile shade is the fact that it falls under a category of colors called “greige,” a mix of grey and beige hues.
Never is this quite as apparent as in this example, which mixes dark Urbane Bronze with a light, creamy beige together on this colonial style without any noticeable clashing in the tones of either color.
4. Sleek Blackout
All of the examples of Urbane Bronze being used on homes have the dark greige paired with a lighter accent tone to balance out the weightiness of the overall color palette.
The above example, however, leans into the depth of the Urbane Bronze tone and uses black for most of the home’s trim and fittings to create a very sleek and bold blackout-type color scheme.
Even without a lighter tone acting as a counterbalance, this color combination still manages to be very effective thanks to the more modern style of the home that is far more receptive to bolder color choices like these.
5. White & Wood Accents
The green undertone of Urbane Bronze lends itself well to being paired with earthy colors and materials. This beautiful two-story home is one such example, which pairs the deep color on the walls with brown, white, and gray that lines certain parts of the house.
The result is a palette that manages to feel modern and organic, allowing the home to fit in well with its surroundings while also being eye-catching to people from the outside.
6. Bronze with Brick
As a testament to the versatility of Urbane Bronze as a color for home design, this cottage-style home uses the color as an accent to the warm brick masonry that is used as the primary exterior cladding.
The hits of Urbane Bronze used on the dormers as well as the trim color for the windows and doors, give these fixtures a bit of a metallic look that pairs especially well with the red of the brick for an industrial feel.
7. Modern Three-Tone
Our last example on this list thrusts Urbane Bronze into the domain of the hypermodern, using the hue as part of a three-tone palette that divvies up this home’s angular structure into sections that the eyes can easily follow.
Although the eyes will inevitably be drawn to the beige paneling and natural wood siding of the home, the upper floor sections done up in Urbane Bronze serve to keep the color scheme rooted and balanced, with neither of the brighter tones overpowering the other.
Why Is Urbane Bronze So Good?
As we’ve seen from the seven examples above, Urbane Bronze has proven itself to be a very versatile color choice for all manner of home exteriors—after all, it wouldn’t be called Sherwin Williams’ Color of the Year for nothing.
But why, exactly, is it so effective? We’ve offered a few of our insights in the list below; however, do note that design and color preferences are ultimately subjective, so take them with a grain of salt.
- Dark, but not completely: Urbane Bronze may be one of the darker shades in the spectrum of greige hues, but it doesn’t quite reach black just yet. The slight lightness allows it to blend a bit more smoothly with light and soft tones as there is less contrast.
- Organic green undertones: Although Urbane Bronze is technically considered greige, it is quite special in that it has a greenish undertone to it that lets it pair really well with organic colors like brown and green in addition to its typical synergies as a shade of warm grey.
- Fits various styles: As a result of its color mixing options, Urbane Bronze manages to be incredibly versatile. Whether it’s used on the siding of a craftsman home or the subtle accents of a modern mansion, the neutral yet organic nature of Urbane Bronze ensures it will almost always fit in.
