Bungalow Colors Exteriors

by Robert Schweitzer

Book Overview

Bungalow Colors: Exteriors addresses the importance of color in Arts& Crafts architecture. Drawing on the works of such Arts & Crafts master as Greene & Greene, Stickley, and Wright, this new volume... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586851306
• ISBN13: 9781586851309
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith Publishers
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 9.9" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

The History of Home Colors

Learn about the trends of home colors throughout history, and find tips for returning your bungalow to a shade from the period in which it was built.

Very useful for building my new bungalow home

I was skeptical about this book after reading other reviews. However, I was very pleasantly surprised how useful two particular sections of this book were for me. The "Developing Your Own Color Scheme" section takes you through decisions for each part of your exterior. Not only is there the body of the house to decide a color for, but there are the trim and accent colors, the window sash, the roofing materials, and the foundation. In order for a color scheme to work and show off your bungalow's best features, all of these elements need to work together. The other section I liked is "Before And After," which shows how actual homes were improved by emphasizing or de-emphasizing certain elements of their exteriors. I even chose my own colors from one of the alternate color schemes the author suggests. Warning -- the color swatches printed in the book look nothing like the real Sherwin-Williams colors of the same name. If you see a color you like, take the book with you and find a similar color at the paint store.

Great book for ideas

This book does a very good job of outlining the history of bungalow painting but what I liked best was the many houses in the second half where he shows you some very nice color combinations. If you are beginning to think about painting the outside of your bungalow, I would highly recommend this book.

Excellent for guidance, not just simple answers.

We just finished having the exterior of my maybe-sort-of-kind-of a bungalow circa 1929 house painted. This book was critical to helping us decide which set of colors we would use, and how we would use it, and we wound up not too far away from the house colors used on page 160. Bungalow Howie is right that the colors in the book aren't perfectly matched to the paint. Given the limitations of four-color printing, they can't be. Sure, the Arts & Crafts palette in the back isn't quite what the actual card from Sherwin-Williams looks like. But if you take the card and those pages, you can get a pretty good idea of what the color shifts in the book are. For most of the colors, they're not that problematic. As a lot of these questions are about how these colors go together, rather than precisely which color to use, I'm not convinced that it's really a problem. The history was excellent, and it was great to see the old sample cards. If you want a book that will tell you what color to paint your house, you probably shouldn't be buying a book. Asking an expert who can come look at your house makes more sense. If, on the other hand, you want a book that will explain to you which colors were used, why they used, and how they work together, this is an excellent book to read. You'll still want to see samples of color on the house, but this can help you evaluate what you're getting and make a decision.

Start your research with this--you might not need another!

This book was so encouraging, with its color and colorized photos of old houses. The REALLY helpful parts are the list of resources and the color palettes for helping to choose your home's restored look. The author really provides a good argument for thinking through what look (historically accurate, modern, romantic, edgy, whimsical, etc.) you want to achieve BEFORE choosing colors--and then thinking a little bit more. The author's easy-going voice covers an incredible range of topics and suggestions. But at no time does he steer a reader towards any particular conclusion--he doesn't seem to have an agenda, in other words, which is pleasantly surprising. The book inspired me to peel off a bit of paint from my house (right down to the wood--guess I bought this book just in time!) and discovered its original color (somewhere between butternut squash & peach), painted 72 years ago. Being able to see the body's original color was SO exciting! Restoring older houses is worth the effort. Get this book and go for it!