Colourful Nova Scotia Homes

Okay, so let's say you just inherited an adorable seaside home in Nova Scotia. It is a traditional home made entirely of wood, either clapboard or cedar shingles, and you have to select the colours to paint it. Such difficult and weighty decisions to be made - but oh the fun of selecting paint for your imaginary home!  Kate and I pondered and considered and considered and pondered which colour combinations were our favourites when we were driving around Nova Scotia. I'll show you some of the colours we saw and you can decide for yourself what ones you would select.
Are you ready for a colourful feast for the eyes?  
(Please note that I struggled to describe some of the colours on the buildings and I was often surprised how different the colours looked from one photo to the next and from one monitor to the next, so forgive any inaccuracies)

Nothing says maritimes like a brightly coloured lighthouse and Peggy's Cove lighthouse is one of our most famous.  As I mentioned in a previous post, they were repainting Peggy's Cove lighthouse when we were there so I was able to bring home a couple of flecks of paint that I found lying on the rocks.  I colour matched the paint flecks to my paint decks. 

I found the best match for the white was chantilly lace (BM OC-65). The red was more difficult though. The closest colour was CIL crimson red (CIL 31YR 10/591), but given that many of you don't have access to CIL paints since it is a Canadian paint company I tried my best to find a matching red in Benjamin Moore paint and that seemed to be million dollar red (BM 2003-10).

My imaginary home would look amazing painted in Peggy's Cove lighthouse white and red, don't you think?

If I decided to paint my imaginary home lighthouse red, I would add a flower bed with matching roses - just like we saw beside this Lunenburg shipping warehouse.  

While I liked red, I think one of my favourite house colours was gray - in all its variations.  

This beautiful dark gray home in Lunenburg had white trim with tiny details highlighted in red.

I loved this charcoal gray warehouse with the orange-red doors (loved the little light over the small door too),

and the bold yellow front door on this charcoal gray home.

How about a lighter blue-gray with cream trim and butterscotch brown highlights.

Red and white seemed like a popular combination with a gray house. This pretty light gray home in Peggy's Cove with white and red accents was one of my favourites for its simplicity.  

Doesn't the Canadian flag look great with the house's colours?

I have to say that I am finding it really difficult to decide how to describe the paint colour of this gorgeous Lunenburg house in the photo below.  I think in person it looked gray with a hint of blue - or was it green???  Nevertheless, I liked the unusual accent colours of the warm caramel-coloured trim and the brick red front door.

  

The wreath decorating the front door made from starfish, reindeer moss, and shells was perfect for a seaside home.  I will definitely have to have one of those for my imaginary home.

This art gallery had very similar trim colours, but the main body was more of a french blue - also very pretty.

There seemed to be a wide range of greens - some more muted and some a brighter fresher shade. 

The home in the photo below is the oldest house in Lunenburg (dated 1760).  It had been painted a lovely dark greeny-gray colour which was paired with white trim and a brick red front door.

I thought this Mahone Bay home had a lovely, albeit more unusual, colour combination using khaki green paired with a lighter green trim and an orangey-red front door.

This pretty moss green Lunenburg home had both white and a apricot orangey-yellow used for the trim.

What about choosing a minty green house with white trim and a red door?  It looks so pretty - and especially if you can convince your neighbour to paint their house a complimentary blue.

Blue in all its shades is a classic colour to paint a maritime house.  

The one below had such pretty fan detailing which had been highlighted by painting it cream and a darker blue.

This light blue home also had white and a darker blue trim. I love the little details over the windows (you can see a closer shot in the second photo).

And another blue home with white and darker blue trim, but this time with a beautiful burgandy front door.  

The home in the photo below is in Halifax and was painted a gorgeous dark gray-blue colour with white trim.  It had the most amazing conservatories at both ends of the home.

Here's a closer look - gorgeous, no?

I think my imaginary home definitely needs at least one conservatory since I now have conservatory envy.

This tiny home in Lunenburg looked so pretty with the white trim and brick red storm doors complimenting the french blue paint.

And a pretty home painted blue with pale butter yellow trim and a beautiful display of red flowers in the window box.

And how about this gorgeous shade of royal blue on the Lunenburg Fish Company building with the perfect shade of yellow on the doors.

While the original old paint of white with light blue trim was pretty, the new colours on the house below are outstanding.  I loved the beige and maroon with the deep navy blue.

And we can't leave the blue homes without considering aqua/turquoise. There were surprisingly few turquoise homes as I thought it would be a popular choice, but at least I found a few to add to the inventory. 

I'm not usually a fan of any roofing except natural cedar shingles or black/gray/brown neutral tiles.  Yet here the brown-red colour of the roof is perfect with the aqua paint and white and burgandy trim.  

Or would you consider darker teal trim with your turquoise home?

Yellow is also a beautiful and classic choice for a maritime home.  

White trim with a yellow house appeared to be the most popular choice, but there were others as well.

How about a yellow house with a tiny bit of navy blue on the door and highlighting the white trim?

Or white and teal blue trim as a compliment for yellow?

There were a few more unusual colours of trim for yellow homes, such as this pretty greeny-gray,

or the dark red trim used on the tourist information building in Peggy's Cove,

or a dark chocolate brown trim like on this church in Mahone Bay.

Would you considered a shade of brown for you maritime home? 

This light brown home had a darker taupe and brick red trim.  Very understated, very pretty!

The home on the left is typical of the older homes in Lunenburg (dating from the late 1700s and the early 1800s) with tiny windows and little in the way of ornamentation. The dark mushroom colour with a tomato soup coloured front door seemed a fitting historic colour combination.

And another house (dating from 1804) painted in a historic reddish-brown shade would be a pretty choice.

This gray-brown home in Halifax had white and light yellow trim.  I would have used a slightly bolder yellow for the front door, but it is still a pretty combination.

While white doesn't seem too interesting after all the other amazing colours we have seen, it is very pretty with black trim. Kate and I did agree that you would have to decide on your house colour in relation to your neighbours so if they were all wild then maybe a white house would be the ticket - with a lovely bright front door though - 

like maybe this one.

And what about leaving the cedar shingles to weather naturally. While there were many buildings down near the docks that had lovely silvery gray cedar-shingles on them, these next two homes were about the only houses I saw that had been left with natural wood.  Although you could definitely see the wood grain, I'm not sure that they didn't have some kind of transparent stain on them - one in white and one in charcoal gray. Either way it was a pretty look.

While I could never paint my imaginary house pink (or any other wild popsicle colour), I did love this store's complimentary flower box arrangement.  The orange and red in the flowers looked fantastic with the pink.

And a few other daring colour combinations. I admire people for having the chutzpah to select these colours (even though I'm not that daring).

Well now that you have had a glimpse of the many, many, many colours used on the homes in Nova Scotia, it is time to declare your favourite. What would you paint your imaginary home?  I'm still not sure, but I think it would probably be a gray colour with white trim and a red door ... no, a yellow door ... or ...