Increasing your ranch style home’s curb appeal is one of the best investments you can make into your home. Studies show that improvements to the exterior – things like landscaping, upgraded materials, and attractive finishes – are the number one most likely thing to decrease the time a home spends on the market.
So of course adding curb appeal is essential to you when you’re selecting your roofing color. You want to enjoy your home’s color scheme as much as you want to make sure it is practical, beautiful, and won’t go out of style for a future sale. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of visual ideas to inspire your exterior and roofing color selections.
Choosing a Brown Roof
Once you choose a roof color, you’re going to live with it for 20 or more years. You can paint siding or replace vinyl much sooner if you aren’t happy with the color, so make sure you’re choosing a roof color for the long haul. One of the best ways to ensure your satisfaction long term is to choose a neutral roofing color, like brown, that can coordinate with a range of warm, cool, neutral, and accent tones.
But since brown comes in such a range, it can be challenging to channel your creative energy into a cohesive color scheme that you’ll love forever. So here are seven brown roofing color scheme displays to inspire your entire exterior color scheme.
1. A Cool Brown Roofing Color Scheme
Though brown is typically thought of as a warm color, it’s not uncommon to find a brown roof with a cooler undertone. There are so many shades of brown to choose from, and a cool undertone has the potential to open up an array of possibilities in your other exterior colors, because you aren’t bound to warm tones in your brick, siding, and trim colors.
Take this home with gray shutters and warm gray siding, for example. The cool-toned brown roof bridges the gap between the gray tones and the brown brick siding.
2. A Warm Brown Roof with Shades of Beige
Though brown is typically thought of as a warm color, it’s not uncommon to find a brown roof with a cooler undertone. There are so many shades of brown to choose from, and a cool undertone has the potential to open up an array of possibilities in your other exterior colors, because you aren’t bound to warm tones in your brick, siding, and trim colors.
We’ve explored a cool brown roof with gray tones. Now let’s have a look at a warm brown roof with shades of beige. One way to ensure the colors of your exterior endure through different trend cycles is to choose multiple shades of the same color, and in this case multiple shades of warm browns and beiges. You can see how the dark brown shutters, multi-toned brown brick accent, and different shades of beige siding and trim add dimension to this exterior without too much contrast. Instead of making a statement, this color combination aims to add depth and comfort to the exterior of the home.
3. A Light Brown Monochrome Exterior
Some home plans have plenty of dimension without having to add depth using a range of colors. Take this all-brick home for example. This homeowner has used a similar shade of brown for the roof and the brick, creating a monochrome look that’s classic while the home’s shape itself adds plenty of dimension.
Another important factor in this instance is that the stunning landscape adds enough visual interest that the home itself has no need to compete. The homeowner chose a color scheme that compliments the natural greens and browns around it. So whether your strategy is to let the shape of the home itself do the talking by choosing a monochrome palette, or if you’re looking to compliment a beautiful landscape, a light brown monochrome effect might be your best roofing choice.
4. A Light Brown Roof with Darker Siding
Brown roofs can come in a range from cool to warm, yes. But another choice that must be made is light versus dark, and the difference therein can be dramatic. You can see by this example that choosing a lighter tone on the top and a darker tone on the bottom of the home is a great way to play with proportions, enhancing different parts of the exterior.
This contrast highlights the pitch of the roof. The darker siding beneath the roof opposes the lighter colors in the gable and on the roof, causing the home to appear taller and more grand. Consider this color scheme to draw the eye upward toward the roof.
5. A High Contrast Exterior Color Scheme
We’ve seen shades of brown add dimension, but for optimal contrast consider a dark brown roof with white siding. This classic, New England inspired color scheme makes a home stand out, rather than allowing it to blend in. But the advantages of this dark brown roof with white siding goes beyond curb appeal: white siding isn’t prone to sun-fading, so it’ll last longer and require paint less often so the siding is likely to last as long as the roof itself.
6. Contrasting Exterior Tones
While choosing similar undertones can create a cohesive color scheme, contrasting warm and cool tones can add immense visual and curb appeal. You can see in this ranch-style home that the roofline has about equal proportion with the face of the home.
So using a greige siding with a warm brown, medium-toned roof adds an unexpected and subtle contrast. Use this color scheme to add a certain je ne sais quois to your exterior.
7. Using a Brown Roof to Accent Red Brick
Nothing is more classic on a home than red brick, and while the most obvious pairing might be a black roof, a neutral-toned brown roof can add a softer element to the bright red of the brick.
You can see in this red brick example that the exposed medium-brown roofline enables a more muted color scheme and a more versatile curb appeal.
Read also: Landmark Moire Black vs Charcoal Black
