Roof Gutters - just had a new dark charcoal/black roof installed. Have a very traditional home. Looking at both white & black 6 in 027 thick K style w/ matching downspouts except white on outer columns if we choose black gutters. The back of our house is more plain than front which could impact the look. We live in Southeast Georgia. Should we get black or White? We ruled out copper due to price. Attaching pics of front and back

Just painted our new garage SW 6252 Ice Cube. It ended up being a bit whiter than we expected, so looking to balance it out with a darker trim. Any suggestions for what color trim we should go with? Leaning toward a cooler grey like SW 7649. Our house is a cool blue close to SW 6528. Thanks!

We are building a home right now, and are in talks with pool builders to design the backyard. We have the design pretty much down (we need a large grass area for our dogs), but are still undecided on what the flooring is going to be. We'd love travertine tile, but can't do it for the full decking due to cost. We thought about doing it just under the covered patio, and then doing spray deck/cool deck for the rest.

The pool designer then floated the idea of using the same porcelain wood- like tile from the interior of the home, and having that be placed in the covered patio area (see the 3rd photo). We have 12 foot sliding glass doors going out to that patio, so she said it would help make it more of an indoor/outdoor feel.

Has anyone done this? Or have any thoughts- positive or negative? It sounds like a good idea but want to make sure I'm not missing anything!

Houzz Research surveyed 1,191 U.S. homeowners who recently finished, were working on, or were planning an exterior project. Here's what's shaping curb appeal in 2026.

Wall colors are warming up

Beige is now the most popular exterior wall color at 24%, more than double its 10% share in 2024. White (14%) and gray (12%) both declined, and green (9%), black (8%) and brown (7%) round out the list.

Black is the new go-to trim

Black trim is up 17 points since 2024 to 39%, overtaking white at 19%. Nearly 7 in 10 homeowners (69%) chose trim and wall colors that contrast.

No single siding material dominates

Stucco leads at 28%, while natural wood, fiber cement, and plastic or vinyl are tied at 21% each. On natural wood projects, vertical siding (45%) is well ahead of lap siding (18%) and shakes or shingles (16%). Stone veneer, concrete and engineered wood each come in at 12%, with natural stone, aluminum and composite at 10%.

Beams are the breakout accent

Trim is still the most common exterior accent (69%), but beams are up 24 points since 2024 to 43%. Columns or pillars (42%), awnings (30%) and shutters (19%) also grew.

Front doors are getting more attention

78% of exterior door projects are at the front of the home, up 8 points from 2024. Fiberglass is now the top front door material (27%), followed by wood (20%) and aluminum-clad doors with wood interiors (19%).

Landscaping does a lot of the work

74% of homeowners upgraded plants, shrubs or trees, 62% added beds or borders, and 45% added paths, stairs or steps. The most popular plant choices are flowering (82%), low-maintenance (73%), pollinator-friendly (56%), native (55%) and drought-resistant (49%).

It's not all about looks

Roofing (51%), gutters and downspouts (48%) and exterior doors (34%) have each risen 7 to 8 points since 2024.

About the study: the 2026 U.S. Houzz Outdoor Trends Study surveyed 1,191 U.S. Houzz users aged 18 and older who completed an outdoor or exterior upgrade in the past 12 months, were working on one, or planned to start one within six months. It was fielded April 25 to May 6, 2026.

Hi! As you can see, I have a ranch-style house with orange brick and a light yellow vinyl siding and trim that covers the upper part of right side of the house, the garage door, the fascia, eaves, and trim. The window trim is white. The roof is a grayish brown. I chose the white and grayish brown to keep things kind of neutral and in anticipation of changing the siding color.

I’ve always hated the yellow and am ready to either paint or replace the siding. Do you have any thoughts on color? What neutrals go best with this very orange brick? Does anyone have experience with painting vinyl siding? You may be able to tell by the camellias and gigantic magnolias, but we live in the SE, so hot and humid for a chunk of the year - hence the vinyl siding - but I wonder how painted vinyl would do in this climate.

Finally, my husband wants to do cedar shingle siding where the siding is on the upper right. I think the color would be indistinguishable from the brick and too much orange, and the style itself doesn’t exactly go with mid-century ranch, BUT I’m willing to be persuaded. Any thoughts on cedar shingles?

Thanks so much for your help!

Oops! Edited to add that I was also going to ask about our weird front entrance but thought I’d asked enough questions for one post. I can’t change the title now, though.

3 design ideas for a pavilion with sitting area, like a cafe, on to ground floor and a small gym upstairs - which one is better for this modern building? 

A B or C ?

We have a dispute to settle ... I'll tell you later which one I like most.

I am updating a very tired and neglected home in western NC. The garage was converted into interior living space and this old slider has to go. What would you replace with?

There has been some water intrusion at the sill of the slider in the past. Issue has been mostly resolved with new gutters but this geography gets a lot of rain and some heavy downpours so I’m hesitant to just replace with a new slider at driveway level.

Rough opening is 100”x80”

Easiest solution is just a replacement slider but curious to hear other ideas that would make it not so obvious that it used to be a garage.

There is an additional garage on the lower level and the interior space serves as a “flex space”/additional living room.

Hello, would love any help. I am struggling with my house, getting new siding. I need some opinions from people who are better at design than me. We have black garage and shutters and doors. Are leaning towards mineral deep, with these board and batten accents. House is similar to this design.

I like clapboard more, but it’s out of stock for a few months. Debating if I wait, or just get dutchlap.

Thanks’

My family recently needed to choose new exterior colors for our house in Costa Rica. It sounded simple until we tried to make the decision together.

Looking at individual paint swatches didn’t help us understand how the colors would work across the whole house. The main walls, trim, porch ceilings, columns, doors, and smaller accents all affected one another. Existing materials, shadows, and the surrounding vegetation made the decision even harder.

We tried visualizing the options mentally, but everyone formed a slightly different picture. That made conversations such as “What if the walls were darker?” or “Would that trim work with the roof?” surprisingly difficult.

I looked at existing visualization tools, but many were tied to a particular paint brand, offered limited control over individual surfaces, or used generative AI to reinterpret the house. I didn’t want a redesigned or newly generated house—I wanted to keep our actual photograph and deliberately apply colors to the surfaces we were considering painting.

So I started building a small browser-based tool called House Color Lab.

The workflow is intentionally manual:

1. Upload a photograph of the house.
2. Define the individual paintable areas.
3. Assign colors to walls, trim, ceilings, columns, doors, and accents.
4. Save complete schemes rather than isolated colors.
5. Compare alternatives side by side.
6. Export an image for discussion or for sharing with a painter.

It is not an AI makeover tool. It doesn’t invent landscaping, replace windows, change the architecture, or pretend to know exactly how real paint will look. The goal is simply to make the color relationships easier to discuss while keeping the original house recognizable.

I also designed the project data to stay in the browser, with downloadable backups, because house photographs can be personal. And I’m very clear that a screen preview is only a planning aid—the final candidates still need to be tested with physical paint samples in the actual outdoor light.

What began as a tool for one family decision gradually became something I thought might help other homeowners and painters facing the same problem. There is a free prepared demo if anyone would like to try the workflow without uploading a photograph:

https://housecolorlab.com/demo

I’m the person who built it, so this is partly a project introduction, but I’m also genuinely interested in feedback:

• How do you currently compare exterior color ideas?
• Would you prefer precise manual control or faster automatic recoloring?
• Which part of choosing exterior colors causes the most disagreement or uncertainty?

I’d especially like to hear from anyone who has recently painted a house—or regretted a color after seeing it across the entire exterior.

Need help. Just purchased a home and originally wanted to paint it a white with accenting dark columns and shutters but I noticed AFTER closing the fascia and soffits were tan 🤦‍♂️ now I can’t think of what would go nice with the tan because I definitely don’t want to remove all the soffits and paint them.

Hi everyone, I’ve been kind of obsessed with California rooms lately and since we’re already planning to redo the whole backyard this feels like the time to do it.

My issue (and reason for this post lol) is I honestly don't really know how these bigger remodels work. I've only done smaller stuff with contractors before, nothing where there are many moving parts, but i've been hearing from a lot of people that remodeling is the way to go since they handle everything for you which is a huge selling point for me

For context we’ve been talking to local firms like OC Remodelers, Sea Pointe, and a couple others, mostly because I want to compare how each one scopes the same backyard. Haven’t signed anything yet but the proposals are making me realize how differently companies can package these projects.

If you've done a project like this, where did you even start? 

also very curious what caught you off guard once yours got underway because i feel like there are probably a million things im not thinking about yet lol (part of me wants to make a giant spreadsheet with every single thing we want in the yard so I can compare proposals properly, and part of me feels like that’s probably overkill…)

Hey reddit thanks in advance for any feedback. I'm siding my house (eastern coastal), looking for input on this color combination. Its a dark blue on the bottom (vinyl horizontal clapboard) with a lighter blue/grey on the gables and dormer (vinyl cedar shingle). Does this look nice and modern for a coastal home?

The roofing company uses Owen's Corning Shingles. We are thinking of Brownwood.

https://www.owenscorning.com/en-us/roofing/shingles/trudefinition-duration?shingle-color=brownwood

ETA we're between Teak and Brownwood now. Everyone's been so helpful, thank you!!​

Any, literally ANY, help I would be extremely grateful for. (Round 2, posted wrong pic)

Hey! We recently moved into a 1979 home in Calgary, Alberta, Canada (Canadian Zone 4a). It has a big, wide-open front yard, and I absolutely LOVE the architecture of our house. I'd really like to choose a tree that complements it and enhances the overall look of the property.

Eventually, I'd love to reduce the amount of lawn and introduce more layered planting with shrubs, grasses and perennials. But I want to choose the tree first so I can plan the rest of the landscaping around it.

My number one priority is aesthetics. I'd love a tree that looks beautiful with the house and becomes a defining feature of the property as it matures. Shade would certainly be a bonus, but it's secondary to finding the right tree from a design perspective.

I initially considered a bur oak, but a local arborist recommended an Ohio buckeye instead, largely because I'd mentioned wanting shade. That got me thinking that perhaps I should approach this more from a landscape design perspective.

The yard faces south/southwest and gets plenty of sun. We're in Calgary, so cold hardiness is obviously a consideration.

If you were designing the front landscape of this house, what tree would you choose, and why? I'm completely open to ideas and would love to hear what others think would complement the architecture best!

How can I style my front porch to liven it up? I specifically dont know what to do to the right of the door.

(Ignore the unfinished landscaping. We are working on that, too. Already have a plan)

Hey guys, back again to choose a new roof color for our coastal home! This is Owen Corning AI tool and hard to know how accurate the colors are, but we’re between top “Williamsburg gray”, middle “sierra gray”, and bottom “driftwood”. I originally thought I wanted black but I don’t know if that too harsh on a coastal vibe home.

The AI tool took away our red brick front steps. They are not crazy prominent but something to consider with colors probably. Open to other options in the Owen’s Corning brand too. Thank you guys in advance!!!

4ft high. Recently cleared all the dead brush and dirt from top of the walls and need advice on how to improve the look a little. First photo with fire pit has maybe 8ft before it touches concrete patio area. Second photo (excuse the in progress plant stand) has more space in front. Plan on getting turf for the lawn. Any advice welcome!

We just signed an 18 month lease for this ranch style home in Boulder, Colorado. We know what we want to do with the backyard, but not the front. It just looks so plain and dull. I’m thinking a few big potted plants with brightly colored pots along the front, some solar pathway lights, maybe window boxes for the front windows? The stretch along the front of the house is small rocks, wondering if I should get a roll- out wooden pathway to go over the rocks? What about for the grass? I was thinking a couple plastic adirondack chairs, maybe dark blue, and put them angled towards each other on the lawn? I’d love advice!

adding picture in the comments because I couldn’t figure out how to attach to post

My first house has come time for new siding right after replacing the roof last year 😐. The house was raised 6 feet in the 80s, providing me with awkward proportions. Seeking advice oh how to boost the look of my lot, including the driveway, which has been taken over by grass. Thank you in advance.

I’m terrible at this! I’m looking for suggestions for a new exterior paint for the trim of my house. I don’t want anything yellow I don’t want anything dark white wouldn’t mind going towards a white with maybe a gray undertone or a soft white I wanna make sure that the white windowsills do not look dingy any help is greatly appreciated.