A Tuscan Color Palette
For Our House
Can you suggest a Tuscan color palette for our house? (Reader question)
Tuscan village rooftops, Province of Siena, Italy
Hello Renate,
We live in a home that was renovated with a beautiful Tuscan theme.
The exterior of the house does not seem to fit with the interior, though.
The roof is brick red and the house itself is painted a cream color (almost pale yellow) with shutters that are painted a pale grey aqua-blue (don't know how to describe the color, really!)
Question: What color should we paint the house and shutters to complement the red roof, and to go along with the interior Tuscan theme?
Thank you!
Brigette
(USA)
Hi Brigette,
This is an interesting question, because if you look at pictures of Tuscan homes,
you will find that the combination of brick-red tiles, cream colored walls and
light blue shutters is quite common in an exterior Tuscan color palette.
If your home looks a bit like the one to the left, you're really fine because that house sits smack in the middle of Tuscany.
If you feel that your house colors don't really look like Tuscan
paint colors, this could be because the red, cream and blue that were chosen aren't the
correct hues, tints, or shades.
It may be that the roof is too red and new-looking. The 'roofscapes' of Tuscan villages usually look washed out and grayed, rather than shiny and bright.
However, you can easily integrate a bright-red roof into a Tuscan color palette by painting the walls in really mellow, somewhat grayed Tuscan colors, like
- a soft, peachy terracotta, or
- a chalky apricot pink, or
- a pale yellow (similar to the color of straw), or
- an earthy yellow ochre (if you prefer stronger colors).
As for the shutters, pale blue is perfectly fine for a Tuscan color palette, as long as it looks greyed (and not 'tropical').
As an alternative to your blue shutters, you might want to consider any of the following Tuscan shutter colors - any of them will fit into a typical Tuscan color palette:
- dark green (similar to dark laurel leaves, or bottle green, or deep fir green - they all work in Tuscan color schemes), or
- really pale bluish or greenish gray, or
- deep 'oxblood' red. (You'll see some examples of these colors on the page about exterior window treatments in Northern Italy.)
Alternatively, if they're wooden shutters, you could decide to strip them of their current paint & stain them a rich, dark, natural brown, covered with clear varnish). Many Tuscan houses have doors and shutters that aren't painted at all.
I hope this helps - Good Luck!
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