>>All the more reason to buy a house and do it the way you want. And don't listen to what the real estate agent may say about chances of selling a colorful one - you don't care whether it will attract 50 or 500 customers. You need only one.
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>Your message got me thinking. I do recall that Germany was extremely dull colorwise. Only the flower boxes were colorful. Other places in Europe were much more colorful but then there were sections in Spain where every single building was stark white. I actually liked it.

Ah, the Mediterranean limestone. I sometimes go surfing Panoramio over Dalmatian coast just to enjoy the colors. Yes, the stone is white - its dust is white - but then their boats are in bright colors, the air isn't so humid so the sky and the water are stark blue... and the wine is good (if you know where to buy).

>Bright and cheerful to me next to the beautiful flowers :o) I'm not sure when it became standard or common taste to have neutral colors on the exterior of houses. In the south where it gets so hot and expecially in really sunny places (like Arizona) it is common due to the extreme heat and number of sunny days. When it is 115 degrees and sunny every day white is the best color for the exterior of the house :o)

OK, this is south - I don't see how painting the house _screen.BackColor=0x906060 helps reflect the heat ;). OK, somewhat brighter, maybe 0xb08080... but still.

> Given the number of rainy days in the Pacific Northwest, I'm alittle surprised that there are not more colorful buildings to cheer things up. Now, unless the house is painted in pastels (beach colors), it is considered poor taste to paint a house a bright color.

Nobody got fired for buying IBM/M$/gray, eh? I grew up taught that one does not mix blue and green, that purple (magenta, crimson, violet - all the same to me, can't memorize which is which) is bad because it doesn't go with anything else etc. Then I saw people actually using those colors - their house fronts, their garments, vehicles - and it was beautiful. Then I also saw some darker yellow with a certain green (as on the "Ghana house" shop in Richmond, behind VCU parking garage) reproduced on a wall of an, otherwise gray, apartment building, and it was ugly. Well, not each time, seems to be sensitive to the color of light... bad at sunset, great at noon, or something.

My point here is that poor taste in painting is cultural and can be surpassed by effort of will :).

> There are many beach areas with bright buildings. There is a difference in tones too. There are a few houses here painted BRIGHT orange with green shutters and the like. They are generally considered ugly and in poor taste. It is more common to have a neutral colored house (although some are venturing into darker shades of beige or taupe) and a bright red door or colorful shutters.

My parents' house was always bright yellow, 0x93ffff or so, which was customary in the area (just because simply whitewashing was thought to be at least poor, if not poor-taste), with knee-high dark brown border on the bottom. When they rebuilt most of the house in '63, they put some other surface (other than the ubiquitous adobe) which required different coloring technique - and they picked something that was supposed to be bordeaux, aka burgundy or some other black wine color. It turned to be far brighter than anybody expected - and stayed so for ages until Sun bleached it some. Then we repainted it with acrylics, and it turned out somewhat darker, but even more saturated, and more on the magenta side.

And the gate was always dark red. And my parents are supposedly the color conservatives.

> Some higher end neighborhoods actually have convenents that specify that houses cannot be painted drastic colors and the lawns have to be maintained, no broken down vehicles in the yards, no inside furniture on the porches, etc. If you don't like the convenents, then don't move in there. :o) I stay away from places with those rules if I can help it :o)

Our oldest lived in such a place for a year - it's awful. Their landlord imposed some limitations, OK, but then the others imposed limitations on him. What happened with the sanctity of private property? Or is it that you own the house but not the land, you own the right of use for a while - hundreds of years if nothing happens, but there's eminent domain, and the even more eminent retiree from the neighborhood who drives around in his white truck and writes you up if your grass is too long, if your fence needs mending etc. The Big Brother...