Our Colour Selections

The next major milestone in our build after choosing tiles was our colour selection appointment. This is going back a while now so I'll just cover the main points that I remember (I knew we should have started this blog earlier!). If anyone reading has any specific questions just ask and I'd be happy answer :)

I don't know how people design houses without the aid of Pinterest. Seriously! I almost had a pinboard for every decision we had to make. One for kitchen, one for floors, one for kitchen floors...

The hardest decision I think for us was actually our kitchen splashback. As I mentioned in the last post, we are trying to design this house with the idea of selling in approx 5 years time, so any colour decisions had to appeal to a broad market but still work for us for the next 5 years. This meant that we couldn't be too crazy with the kitchen's glass splashback since it is such a huge piece in the living area. Going with something like bright red may look great now, but it would alienate a lot of buyers, and would it still be stylish in 5 years time? We decided after a lot of research that blue is a colour that works well in kitchens and tends not to date. Knowing our luck though in 2017 they'll decide blue is 'out' and we'll be stuck with an 'ugly' kitchen ;)

Rhys went to a glass manufacturer nearby and picked up a few samples of starfire glass (treated to eliminate a tint) and regular glass (which has a blue/green tint), then we bought a few sample pots of different blues and whites from Bunnings and went a bit crazy painting the glass to see how the glass tint would affect the colour. In doing this we found that the colour Lexicon Half by Dulux (a shade of white) when used on the regular glass gave a light blue result - perfect for our kitchen!

Once we had worked out what colour the splashback would be, the rest pretty much fell into place. White cabinets to maintain neutrality, Caesar Stone Night Sky benchtops to contrast against the pale blue and white, and spotted gum timber floorboards. I felt very strongly about hardwood floors rather than tiles and finally won Rhys over through inspiration photos like this:

 

I think that for the family home feel that we're going for, tiles in the living areas when put with our black and white colours made the living areas look very modern and maybe too modern for our overall scheme. The floorboards warmed up the caesarstone benchtops and stainless steel so that it looked more 'cosy' than 'clinical'! Having said that, we will still be putting tiles through the entryway, but I think this will flow nicely with the bathroom and toilet and be lifted by the light carpets in the adjoining rooms (as you'll see below).

Externally, we decided on Jarrah bricks, Woodland Grey for the posts, meter box, downpipes, windows and gutters, Ebony roof tiles, Dune for the garage door, front door and render and Bluestone for the driveway. in the first photo below you can see how the colour Dune looks almost like a different colour when used as regular paint for external fixtures compared to when used as a render. It also shows the Woodland Grey as it would look on a door compared to on guttering etc.

 Jarrah Bricks:

 How it all looks put together:

We're having carpet in the bedrooms, the theatre room and the study (iHub). We chose "Belmont Old Leather 8575" in all rooms, again because it's neutral and goes with our general black/white/grey blue accents colour scheme. We went lighter instead of darker to brighten up the rooms, feeling that a dark carpet with grey walls would shrink the smaller rooms.
We chose the spotted gum because it's a lighter wood, and we loved the variations in the planks. I thought it was one of the flooring choices that had more 'character'. Here are our gorgeous floorboards with the carpet:

Well, I think that's about it for colour selections thank God! I'll let Rhys do our electrical choices lowdown because to be honest my participation in that appointment consisted of one question really - "And how much does that cost?" ;)

Cheers everyone, see you later!